Titanfall: Simulacrum
by Lloyd R. Ferrer
Summary: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the most in-progress, incomplete and messy pile of trash you will read all day. I'm working at 3 in the morning, okay? I've got a life too you know(kind of). I encourage any and all to critique this poor excuse of a story/novella(definitely a novella by the time I'm done). I use serious criticism to my advantage when I am editing/changing things.
1. Chapter 1

**__**Titanfall:  
**__******Simulacrum****

****Written by Lloyd R. Ferrer(Pen Name)****

A fan fiction based off of the video game series __Titanfall.__

**Prologue:**

The crowd of scientists and think-tankers all stared. wide-eyed, at the ending of Dr. Mallard's presentation. A few of them started to mutter among themselves, but Mallard cut them off before it could go on for very long.

"Now, if there are no questions regarding the project's history and development, I would like to request Vinson Dynamic's full agreement and support on my decision to move the Simulacrum Unit Mark II to Pilot trials __immediately.__"

Across the large, oval table, each person turned to each other to have quick, hushed discussion with each other. Some seemed enthused and excited by Dr. Mallard's presentation, while others seems, at the very least, a little concerned.

One scientist, backed up silently by a number of others in the room, stood up from his place at the table, and cleared his throat before speaking.

"Dr. Mallard, this, uh… new __prototype __of yours is very intriguing. Even genius, perhaps, but… have you perhaps considered the possible risk factor behind giving a conscious simulacrum __that much __power?"

Dr. Mallard approached the question with complete silence for the first few seconds. The sound of the lights buzzing became apparent, and the scientist who had spoken up simply looked down at the table before returning to his seat. It was only then that Mallard decided to respond.

"I do agree that is a problem, Wellsen. We can't have just __anyone __running about in a body designed to kill, evade, and adapt to almost anything… so for beginning trials, I have decided to put Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Class Micheal Provus on the top of the candidate list."

A few of the people in the room blinked. Others had the naivety to gasp. Many were nodding their heads in approval.

In his own Pilot-driven society, Provus was little short of a legend; he was daring, tenacious, a good leader, and best of all, he served the IMC valiantly as a Pilot doing the dirty work on the Frontier.

That didn't mean too much to Vinson Dynamics, but it did tell them that he was obedient enough to listen to orders. That was exactly the type of soldier, or killer, that they needed operating the Mark II Simulacrum Unit.

Mallard raised a hand to silence the murmurs that were being passed throughout the meeting room. The scientists let themselves fall quiet after a while, and as soon as the last one was done talking, the doctor picked up a remote, turned to the holo screen behind him, and pushed a button.

A picture of Warrant Officer Provus was shown, except in this picture, he was covered in blood, grit, bits of shrapnel, and was missing several limbs; that being, both his legs were gone up to his knees, and an entire arm up to his shoulder. It took a while for everyone to recognize him as well, considering that his face was partially burned and charred.

Dr. Mallard spoke before anyone else could find the words to do so themselves.

"Warrant Officer Provus was severely injured in an unfortunate incident on the planet Typhon. During a live fire training exercise, an IMC Rifleman accidentally dropped a high explosive artillery shell, effectively killing three and injuring four, including Provus."

Suddenly, it became more clear that Dr. Mallard had chosen Provus as their top candidate for than just responsibility reasons. All it took was one look at the photo on the large screen behind Mallard, for anyone to see that he would die without if he didn't get help.

As the commotion of chattering scientists grew, Dr. Mallard turned to Dr. Pulaski, who, at that current time, was both the senior scientist among the group, and the CEO of the companies' Research Division.

"Do I have your permission to proceed with Pilot trials, Pulaski?"

Dr. Pulaski shrugged, squinting his eyes precariously as he thought it over. The elderly scientist swapped glances with a few of his closer friends along the table, and then he looked back up at Mallard, who was waiting patiently for a reply.

"Permission granted, Dr. Mallard."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter One:**

__[ System OS boot sequence initializing . . . ]__

__[ Boot sequence successful. Retrieving personal data. ]__

__[ Personal data received. Analyzing . . . ]__

__[ Anomaly detected. Analyzing . . . ]__

__[ Error: Data files corrupted. Attempting retrieval #2 . . . ]__

__[ Error: System unable to find 45,907,362 personal memory script commands. Purging . . . ]__

__[ Purging successful. Adding c/true personal memory scripts to data banks. Detecting personality traits . . . ]__

__[ Personality traits added successfully. Welcome, [Data Purged], Chief Warrant Officer, 2____nd____Class. ]__

__[ Testing vital functions . . . ]__

__[ Core Systems: OK. ]__

__[ Combat Systems: OK. ]__

__[ Battery Supply: OK. ]__

__[ Acoustic Systems: OK. ]__

__[ Ocular systems: OK. ]__

__[ Initializing ocular systems. Adjusting optic for optimum adaptation to environment . . . ]__

Death's cold grasp had left his conscience.

He, who had no name. Or in the very least, he could not remember it. He remembered it being there a moment ago, but then, it disappeared without warning.

His sight was vivid, sharp, crystal clear. So much so that he felt the need to blink, in case he was dreaming. He was surrounded by some sort of tight, metal casing with a small, rectangular window that sat, blurry, in front of his vision.

He found, to his alarm, that he could not blink. He tried again, but with no results. He tried moving around his eyes, tried to feel something, __anything, __but in that moment of silent desperation, in the back of his conscience, all he could feel was the metallic scraping of a single sensitive optic moving about.

That was his eye. He __was __that optic.

_… ___No. That isn't possible.__

Or was it?

He tried to think straight, but found he couldn't. Nothing made sense. He wanted to move, but he had no direct feeling. All his existence, his legs, his arms, they had feeling, but it was __different __than he was used to.

This feeling was more pinpointed, as if it was specifically designated in certain spots along his skin.

__My skin.__

__What. Does. My skin look like?__

Slowly, in the same sort of "grinding" way that his apparent "optic" had done it in, he swiveled his head downward to look at himself, which was difficult when he observed once more that he was stuck in a coffin-sized metal box.

__No.__

__No, no, NO.__

__I'm dreaming. I __have __to be. This isn't reality.__

He observed, with his "optic," his damned artificial eye, a body made of black and silver metal, all smoothed out and sanded to a point of perfection and a matte finish.

He let out a terrified grunt, and then, inwardly, he panicked even more when it sounded deep and gravelly, but in a metallic, robotic sort of way. A toned sort of way.

He was a simulacrum. And he had no idea who he was.

__This can't be happening.__

_… ___Okay. Focus. You need to get out of his box.__

He felt around his physical self until he was confident enough to move his arms. They budged a couple inches, and he felt his mechanical fingers scraping the top of the container, but something was holding them back by the wrist joints.

He was almost certain that if he had a mouth, he would have thrown up by then due to sensory over-stimulation and shock of realization, but he couldn't do that, so instead he was simply stuck with a sick mental feeling.

__Alright, you're a simulacrum. They're powerful. Use that power.__

Taking a deep breath, which, through a mechanical interpretation, was little more than a tuned noise, he applied pressure to whatever was holding his arms back, tugging with significant effort instead of pulling.

He heard the sound of something cracking, and he gave one more tug. His right arm cam free. He spent a moment flexing his hydraulic muscles, which he immediately regretted since it terrified him, and then he shuffled his arm around his smooth, yet also boxy body until he had a firm grip on the shackle holding his left arm back. He squeezed it tight, and it popped apart under the sudden pressure, leaving both his upper limbs free.

From there, he moved his hands around the top of the container in the dim light in the hopes of finding something like a latch or emergency lever. To his surprise, and, what was his slowly decreasing alarm, his optic shifted focus in his titanium head, and he found he could see in the dark corners of the box much better. There was a loud rumbling noise in the far distance, too far away for him to tell. He wondered what it was, but decided it was the least of his worries at that moment.

He saw a red handle, small, along the far edge. He reached over to tug on it, and he practically sprang back into the box when the lid suddenly popped off, flying several meters into the thick air ahead of him before coming to a thundering clash on the rubble ahead of him.

__Rubble…__

He looked at his surroundings, minorly shocked to see that the building he was in was in complete shambles. Half the roof was caved in, allowing smoky, dirty sunlight to poke through onto a pile of electrical wires, building support cables, and heaps upon heaps of random rubble. There was so much of it in that very room that he wondered how his little container wasn't covered in it.

There was another loud rumbling, like an explosion, and it was much louder and more apparent now that he was in open air.

He tried standing up, surprised to find that his feet weren't shackled at least.

He stood on one leg, then the other, lifting himself up from the container until he was standing. More alert than ever, he took a step forward, his optic sweeping the ground, then another, then another.

He tripped over a thick piece of re-bar and crashed into a pile of ash.

Picking himself up, he shook his head, naturally, not realizing right away that he no longer needed to do that to clear his senses.

"Shit."

Everything was so __different.__ At that point, he couldn't even tell if it was shocking or scary; or perhaps intriguing. Maybe a mix of all three.

He, who still had no name. He really __did __wish he could remember who he was.

__Focus on that later. You need to find out what you're doing here, and you need to find someone who can help you.__

Clatters of automatic gunfire sounded in the near distance, drawing his attention slightly as he cautiously made his way up the unnatural hill that the rubble had made, up onto the building roof.

__Where am I?__

He cleared the edge of the hole, coming onto the rooftop, just in time to see an explosion go off like fireworks about a hundred meters away, completely obliterating a three-story building in a magnificent mess of smoke and rubble.

__A war zone, I guess.__

__Seriously, I need to find something to defend myself with.__

Until that happened, all he could do was stick to cover. He decided to take a bit of a risk, and switch from walking to running. To his immediate surprise, he found himself covering ground at a significant pace, his strides long and powerful as he crossed the building roof with ease and vaulted a safety railing. He sailed across a large gap and onto the next rooftop, his feet connecting with the ground skillfully and switching back to running.

Another explosion wracked the scene, right over the building that he'd just been in. Mentally, he heaved a sigh of gratefulness that he'd had the ability to free himself from that steel container.

Skyscrapers lined the scenery all around him, screaming of wealth and urbanization between the rays of golden sunlight and random smoke stacks. A dot in the sky grew, fast falling, and it took him a moment to realize it was a titanfall.

__Who's Titan though?__

"Hey! Stop right there, you hear me?!"

He turned around to face the voice that was yelling at him. It was a group of three or so IMC Riflemen, and they didn't exactly look pleased to see him considering that they had their rifles trained on him. As he stood there, frozen, debating what to do, one of them leaned into their shoulder radio and spoke into it.

"SPSU-001 secured successfully, request immediate extraction, Code Blue."

__SPSU-001.__

He didn't exactly like the name. It didn't feel like it fit him, no matter what sort of simulacrum he was. That wasn't who __he __was.

The squad of IMC grunts started to make their way to him, across the roof, but they stopped at the lead one's command. He went back to talking on his radio, his eyes watching his target carefully.

"No, subject does not appear to have retained full memory of his identity. Suspect hostile reaction, may require assistance."

Whoever these soldiers were working for, he didn't feel like taking orders from them. But he felt he had no choice, given that he had little to no idea who he even was.

__If they have answers about my identity, I would follow them through hell to get answers.__

Slowly, compliantly, he raised his robotic arms into a surrender pose in the air, his fingers spread apart evenly and his head unmoving. The squad of Riflemen seemed a little less tense from his show of complacency, because they all lowered their weapons just the tiniest bit.

If he was going to run or fight, it would have to be then.

__Should I?__

It felt right, somehow. To add to that, if they really wanted him to comply, they shouldn't have started pointing guns at him first.

The soldier in the lead took a few steps towards him, one of his arms outstretched. The simulacrum waited until he was about within grabbing distance, and then he dashed forward, punching the IMC grunt in the face before kicking his leg out from underneath him and snapping his neck in one fluid motion.

The other two grunts starting firing, but for some reason the insurmountable spray of bullets that hit him didn't seem to have much effect on him.

He picked up the R-97 that was now lying on the ground beside his robotic feet, and he emptied about a quarter of the mag into the second grunt. The third and last remaining grunt took a look at his squad mates, and then turned and ran. He was gunned down within the second.

He(Who seriously wished he could remember his name) looked around at the easy carnage he'd created with hardly any effort, and then he stared down at his black-silver matte body, searching for signs of damage.

Besides one or two minor scuff marks, and maybe a dent, he was completely untouched.

__I must be made of something fairly strong then.__

__Titanium alloy?__

He wasn't exactly going to sit around debating what he was made of. From the way he'd heard the IMC soldier talking through the radio, someone was coming to pick him up, and he didn't want to be around when they came by.

__The radio.__

Moving quickly, he strode over to the corpse of the squad leader, R-97 in hand. He pulled a wireless ear headset off of the dead body. Then he simply stared at it, unsure on how to use it, since he didn't exactly have an ear to put it on.

__[ Analyzing new data. Gathering information . . . ]__

__There we go.__

__[ Communications link found. Verifying link. . . Verified. Transferring link to on-board acoustic systems . . . ]__

There was the strangely familiar sound of white noise being played through the comms. He waited for a moment, expecting chatter to be heard, but there was nothing.

Sighing in resignation, he stood up from where he was kneeling beside the corpses. He took what he thought he would need from them quickly - a gear belt and a satchel full of explosive charges, a wrist datapad, a B3 Wingman revolver, and as much ammunition as possible.

He set off on a running pace, this time choosing to head north instead of west, according to the compass he'd found in the gear belt. There was also a Rifleman's Service Guidebook, but he wasn't planning on joining the IMC grunt forces anytime soon, so he tossed the booklet.

As he traversed his way through the urban area, realization hit him like a brick, reminding him that he appeared to be in Angel City.

__I don't remember Vinson Dynamics having any facilities here though.__

_… ___Assuming Vinson Dynamics was the company behind… Me.__

The question of his identity continued to nag at his conscience, and it more or less managed to keep him distracted from the countless amounts of distant explosions and gunfire.

He spotted movement, down the littered street. He ducked into cover, behind an overhang heading into an apartment complex, and he stayed there as the ground started to shake in continuous, short bursts, almost like footsteps.

__Titan. Shit.__

It didn't matter if it was an IMC Titan or some other faction, he was almost certain they'd perceive him as a threat, even if he was too confused to have harmful intent.

The IMC radio hummed and crackled loudly for a second, and then the static was replaced by an authoritative voice, male.

_"___This is Blisk. Has anyone made contact with Vinson's little toy yet?"__

It took a moment, but a reply came to him, likely another mercenary. The Titan down the street stopped in it's tracks, and he was almost certain that the Pilot inside was listening to the conversation.

_"___No… I found the extract team a couple minutes ago. Looks like it killed them before they could contain it. I'm sweeping the district for signs of it's whereabouts."__

_"___Good," __Blisk replied, _"___the quicker we get this task done, the better. I'm just about finished being hand-fed by the IMC."__

The Titan down the road seemed to pause for a moment longer, as if sweeping the area. He ducked into cover in case it managed to spot him.

There was the sound of gentle rumbling, which grew to a deafening roar. He turned around just in time to see a Titan falling out of the sky at eye-tearing speeds. There was a sonic boom, and then a collapse as the giant robot slammed into the concrete road, shattering the gray rock into countless pieces of flying and shifting debris, accompanied by the visual shock wave of energized air.

From the dark green coloration of the Titan, he had to guess it was Frontier Militia, and in the distraction of the titanfall, he swapped a look at the first Titan, and recognized it as Apex.

__Great. I doubt either of these two would consider me an ally.__

As he had the thought, he wondered whether it was true or not. He watched the two Titans size each other up for a second or two before entering combat; the Militia Titan was one of the Monarch models, while the Apex Predator Titan appeared to be some heavily modified version of a Ronin.

Only one of them had orders to capture him. Or at least, he assumed so.

Only one of them was obligated to go against him.

He watched the two Titans fight it out in the street alone. The Apex Ronin phase-dashed forward and came up right beside the Monarch, and it slashed at it with it's broadsword. The Militia Titan ducked and moved to the side just in time to have it's top hatch clipped a little. It retaliated by firing it's Chain Gun against the Ronin's legs.

The Apex Titan retreated a bit, one of it's legs more or less crippled. It shot off a couple bursts from it's Leadwall, and the spread made contact with the Monarch's bottom torso, blasting apart several vital functions, including what looked like the wiring for Ocular and Peripheral Systems.

The Ronin lashed out with it's gigantic sword again, catching the blind Monarch-class Titan by the legs and sending it careening onto it's side in a mess of sparks.

__Okay then.__

__I should probably consider this a bad thing.__

In a situation where he had to take a side, he was still assuming that the Militia Pilot inside that Monarch would be much less hostile towards him than any Apex mercenary. Sure, that was an assumption, but considering that the Apex Predators were "hunting" him, he felt he __had __to assume that they didn't have good intent.

He stepped out from behind the pillar he was hiding behind, under the shade of the underpass. He observed the Militia titan scrambling along the ground frantically as it was being pinned to the ground by the Ronin, in preparation to be executed.

Taking an explosive charge in one hand, and the remote in the other, he took a deep breath, and charged full speed. He didn't have a jumpkit, or any other necessary Titan-attacked equipment, which he figured made his action more or less insane.

The Ronin paused mid-swing of his sword, it's optic focusing on the attacking simulacrum with a level of robotic disbelief that was almost comical. He used the moment of confusion to throw a charge right over the Apex Titan's optic before continuing down the road, zigzagging a bit in hopes of avoiding any retaliation fire.

The Ronin swung with it's sword, once, narrowing missing him. The sword lodged itself into the side of a building support, miraculously, and instead of pulling it out, the Ronin made the rather dumb decision to reach for it's optic, to pull off whatever was attached to it.

As it's mechanical hand was over the lip of it's optic, the simulacrum activated the remote, and watched, while running, as the Titan's entire frontal armor and part of it's arm shear apart in the blast.

When the smoke cleared, the hatch was blown open, leaving the mercenary Pilot inside exposed.

With precision-set mechanical arms, he aimed at the exposed Pilot with his R-97, and let off a short burst. Some of the rounds ricocheted off the damaged edges of the cockpit, but a few others found their mark in the mercenary's chest and neck, killing him almost immediately.

The Ronin stumbled about in a frenzy, still linked with the Pilot, which was now a dead corpse sitting inside it's cockpit. It walked into a building, crumbling down a wall and causing it to fall to one side more or less.

A few more seconds passed, and then he threw another charge at the Titan. It stuck on the inside of the cockpit, right next to the dead Pilot, and he wasted no time in pressing down on the detonator.

The Apex Titan exploded in a majestic, terrifying ball of orange-white fire. Smoke billowed out from it's blackened chassis as it burned continuously, with no end in sight.

__Okay, that takes care of that.__

__Question is, will the Militia Pilot repay the favour?__

The Monarch Titan slowly got to it's damaged, metal feet, it's body mass scraping along the cracked concrete in an ugly-sounding way.

It was then, with the giant 24 foot killing machine towering over him about ten meters away, that he realized his chances of survival had seriously decreased.

__But they can rebuild me if I'm a simulacrum, right?__

_… ___And who exactly would "they" be? Hell, I managed to __escape __the IMC's grasp. They wanted to __capture __me, not help me.__

__So who out there would want to help me in any way?__

He should have left the Militia Titan to be destroyed. During the execution, he could have slipped away unnoticed. But instead, he'd decided to save it, out of his own naivety, and it looked as if he would pay the price now.

The Monarch lifted it's Chain Gun. He braced to be torn apart by a flak of automatic 20mm rounds, but then the Titan slung the large battle cannon up, over it's shoulder, where it was holstered carefully.

The Titan let out a series of slow, low-toned mechanical sounds, and then it knelt down so that the cockpit was roughly level with the tiny simulacrum's shoulders.

The hatch opened, and out stepped a male Pilot, equipped with one of the grapple-class equipment variants. He couldn't see the man's expression through his blue-glowing full-face visor, but he didn't need to see it to tell that he was in pain.

The simulacrum, more out of instinct instead of common sense, took a step forward, grasping the Militia Pilot's arm and holding him up with carefully when he was about to crumble to the ground.

The Pilot groaned slightly, and after a moment of observation, the robot noticed a thick piece of shrapnel embedded into the Pilot's abdomen region.

__If that doesn't kill him within the day, it won't take long for the infection to finish him anyways.__

He reached for his first aid kit, which he was now grateful he had. After looking around to make sure there were no other threats around, he started to work on the wound.

"Sit down, lay on your back." he ordered, pointing to the ground. The Militia Pilot hesitated for just a split second, and then did as instructed. He took off his jumpkit to make it easier to sit in one position, and then he let himself rest on his back against the concrete, his Pilot helmet still on his head, concealing his identity.

The simulacrum touched the area around the wedge of shrapnel, and then, without warning the Pilot(Since he knew that would do nothing), he took a firm grip on the end of the metal bit, and tore it out as cleanly as he could.

__Uh… Damn.__

__Okay, hold back the infection. Bandage it up. Jeez, what was I thinking? I'm no doctor.__

Scrambling through the assortment of supplies and tools that he'd messily poured out of the first aid bag, he picked up a bottle of disinfectant, most likely pure alcohol, and he ripped off the cap. The entire top piece of the bottle came flying off in his haste, and he quickly dabbled a good amount of disinfectant on the Pilot's injury before he managed to spill the entire thing.

The Militia Pilot seized up in place and groaned raggedly for a long moment, coughing in a sick manner behind his helmet. The simulacrum wasn't sure why, but he felt enough compassion to grab the man by the arm and shake him reassuringly.

"Hang on there Pilot, that was the worst of it. I'll get you patched up nice and quick."

He still couldn't see the Militia Pilot's expression, but he was almost convinced that he could sense the person almost… __laughing.__

His suspicion was confirmed. A moment later, the man started to chuckle loudly enough to be heard through his helmet. The Pilot spoke before he could think of something to say himself. Their voice was a little weak, if not broken, but it still held a deep rigor to it that was strangely lifting.

"__Damn, __that was a ballsy move you pulled with that merc, you know? I thought I was finished."

If he could have smiled then, the simulacrum would have. But he couldn't, to his renewed horror, so he simply focused on wrapping the stomach wound with as much thick bandaging as possible, creating what he hoped was an effective stopper for the bleeding.

The Pilot shook his head, and he started to talk again. "You know, it doesn't make sense though… you're IMC. If anything, you should have helped out the other guy."

__I'm IMC?__

He looked down at his black shoulder plates. Along one of the thicker, more flat pieces, he made out a clear insignia designating him as a member of the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation. His other shoulder, he observed, held the green-gray logo for Vinson Dynamics.

"So who are you?" the Pilot asked. He seemed genuinely curious. "… Heh. You must be one of those simulacrum test subjects… Only God knows why the hell you're in Angel City, but hey, I can't complain. You saved my skin today."

The simulacrum finished with the bandage wrapping, securing the end of the bandage roll with a single clip that held it firmly in place. He thought long and hard about how to respond, but even then, he had no answer.

__Because I don't even know who I am.__

_… ___It seems as if no one does.__

Slowly, reluctantly, he talked back to the Militia Pilot. Despite the fact that his voice had been toned and changed a bit to fit into the simulacrum voice patterns, he still heard a level of emotion in himself that betrayed his confusion and slight desperation.

"I… Don't know who I am. I don't remember."

"Well, can I at least get a name?"

He didn't respond to the question. He couldn't even remember the basic information needed to recall his __name.__

"I don't remember that either."

"Huh. Really? Well then, how about…"

In a way that screamed of colorful personality, the Pilot tilted his head back to the sky in quiet thought before finishing his sentence.

"... Umbra..! How's that name sound? It fits your color."

__Umbra.__

_… ___Alright, I guess that works.__

He didn't exactly have a choice about the matter. The Pilot had given him a name to go by, and he desperately needed one, so he nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

"Yeah, sure. Umbra… I like it."

Or at least, he thought he liked it. Perhaps he only like it because it was being brutally honest about his new identity as a simulacrum.

__Let's think about that later, Umbra. For now, I gotta decide what to do next.__

Umbra collected all his first aid supplies back into the bag and clipped it back to his gear belt. He held out a hand to help the Militia Pilot up, and the man took it, dragging himself tiresomely to his feet.

"Thanks." he muttered, shaking himself out. Umbra knelt down to pick up his jumpkit and hand it to him, and the Pilot took it back eagerly, putting it back on with practiced speed.

Umbra nodded at him, respectfully. "You gave me a name. Now maybe you could tell me yours?"

The Pilot chuckled again. The laughter helped lighten the mood significantly for Umbra.

"Sergeant Sam Braddock of the Warmonger Corps, serving the Frontier Militia and her interests."

Umbra nodded again, slowly. His mind continued to dwell on what he was going to do with himself.

__I could follow Sam. At this point, it may be the only choice I have.__

_… ___But what about answers to my past?__

Right then, more than anything, Umbra wanted answers as to who he was, and why he was stuck in a simulacrum body and placed in a steel containment unit in Angel City.

That sort of situation left a lot of questions to be answered, but very little answers to be found. It drove Umbra crazy, and he felt a tiny conscious vibration that he believed was the simulacrum equivalent of a headache.

Sam patted him on the shoulder, as if to comfort him; as if, somehow, he understood what was happening to Umbra right then.

The possibility of him __actually __understanding seemed slim, but Umbra accepted the minor show of comfort regardless, shaking his head and looking at the ground.

"You know," Sam began, suddenly, "you don't look like any sort of simulacrum I've come across before. Your body armor is much thicker, more evenly balanced, and it's got a cleaner cut to it. Almost like something between a normal simulacrum, and a Stalker… I'd actually reckon you're some kind of prototype, maybe a second version of the original unit."

That made sense to Umbra. He had observed that his appearance seemed a little… unconventional, but he hadn't thought about it closely until them.

__That might explain why the IMC is trying to "contain" me.__

__If I'm some sort of advanced prototype, they will want me back in their custody before some other faction recruits me.__

_… ___Some other faction like the Militia.__

On one hand, Umbra was certain that he IMC would have more answers regarding his identity, and his past. But at the same time, their goal was to imprison him, not help him.

The Militia would treat him fairly at least. They would likely ask to observe how he functioned at some point, but they wouldn't stick him in a secured box like some toy waiting to be unpacked.

He turned to Sam, who had let go of his metallic shoulder and was standing there, clutching his stomach. A bomb went off in a nearby skyscraper, and they both tried to ignore the sight of the tall building collapsing in the background.

"Alright. So if I'm some sort of advanced prototype, I'm willing to go back with you to the Militia fleet… But I don't want to be treated like I'm just a robot, okay? I'm more than that, I __know __I am."

Sam nodded understandably. The Pilot's mood and atmosphere caught Umbra off guard, once again, and he found himself wondering if he should lighten up a bit around his new-found ally.

"Okay then," Sam started, "let's get going, shall we? I was separated from my team during titanfall. I was caught in some drag, and then pushed way off course by anti-aircraft flak. I'll send an extraction hail to the fleet, and they'll send someone to pick us up at the team's designated extraction point."

Sam's Titan stood up a bit, the opened up it's hatch to let him climb up into the leather chair inside the cockpit. It took the Pilot a while, but he made the climb with some effort, settling back into the cushions of the single seat.

Slowly, the Monarch Titan rose to it's feet, standing at it's full height again. Sam motioned with a hand for Umbra to get moving.

"Come on, climb on top! Extraction point is eighty clicks north of here, in the Agricultural District!"

Umbra sprinted forward and jumped as high up as his robotic legs would take him, and he latched onto a railing along one of the Titan's legs. He pulled himself to the top within a few seconds, and after Sam closed the front hatch, the Titan started down the road, slowly, shakily. Umbra recalled that the Monarch's Ocular and Peripheral Systems were damaged in the fight with the Ronin, which would explain it's reluctantly slow movement.

Dark static filled his ears. Umbra listened closely to the IMC comms link.

The crumbling noise ended abruptly, replaced by Kuben Blisk once again.

_"___Chops, report in, what's your status in District 12?"__

No response. Mentally, Umbra swallowed a subconscious cold lump in his throat.

_"___Chops. Report. In. What the hell are you doing?"__

Umbra had a terrible suspicion that whoever this "Chops" was, he was just responsible for his death.

Chops was the mercenary in the Ronin Titan who was about to kill Sam. And now that the mercenary was dead, Blisk and his Apex Predators would probably be hunting them down.

_"___Chops…! Dammit, don't you ever respond when you're supposed to?!"__


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Two:**

****Audio Log 1 - Umbra****

__The day was long, and kinda rough. Sitting on top of a moving Titan all day does something to a simulacrum's hydraulics, believe it or not.__

__The Titan's ocular systems were bad enough that we had to sop to have it repaired at one point. Really, the damage wasn't that bad - some damaged wiring which was out of place.__

_… ___I'm not exactly sure why I'm starting this log. Hell, I doubt anyone will ever read it… But, I don't have anything better to do. I might as well use the wrist datapad that I stole off that IMC grunt's body. And besides, taking logs might help… clear my mind a bit. Or perhaps, my databanks.__

__I guess that's what I am now. A machine in body, but a human in soul. It's taken me nearly all day to process it… then again, the day largely consisted of uneventful travel on top of Sam's Titan, so there was really no escaping my thoughts.__

__We're heading towards what Sam called his "designated extraction point." I'm not sure if his supposed team will be there with us when a transport answers our distress calls and picks us up. Truth is, I still don't know what I'm going to do, or what's going to happen to me. Everything is so… empty. I have my personality, my self-being, and I know everything there is to know about the Frontier and all that… but I don't have the memories, or the personal identity, to back any of this information up.__

_… ___I need to figure out who I was. But I can't do that when I have to worry about the survival of both Sam and me. So for the time being, I'll just continue to be this "Umbra." This other identity that I got stuck with, because I can't remember my previous one.__

__The question is: what will I do with this new identity?__

****End Log****

Three silver-gray moons danced across the black sky like white fire, their brilliance accompanied by the countless bands of stars that were flecked alongside them.

Frankly, in Umbra's opinion, the colors of the sky reflected terribly with the small campfire they had set up beside an abandoned wheat farm, roughly ten clicks into the Agricultural District. The colors just didn't clash well somehow.

But that was his personal opinion. And atmospheric beauty hardly mattered in Sam's case.

The Militia Sergeant had grown increasingly ill over the day, although he didn't dare admit it to either his Titan or Umbra until they'd stopped by nightfall. By that time, he practically had to be pulled out of his Titan and over to the fire, where Umbra was hoping he would rest and recover enough to make it to the Militia fleet.

They both sat by the fire silently, almost awkwardly. There was a faint buzz in the air, and in the distance, Umbra could see artillery fire bursting against the sky, accompanied by other explosions and bursts of gunfire. Titanfalls approached out of the far away sky like comets shooting towards Angel City.

Out of nowhere, Sam broke the silence.

"You know, I've been thinking about… if I don't make it..."

His voice was alarmingly weak, and the words he chose in that broken up sentence concerned Umbra greatly.

Umbra walked over to where the human Pilot was lying down in the half-dead grass, and with a single slumping movement, the black simulacrum sat down beside him.

He observed that Sam was holding his wound like it was about to burst, and it didn't take a doctor to see that the infection was clearly killing him. That, and inside Sam's body, there were probably countless bits of tiny shrapnel slowly pumping their way through his organs to his heart.

They had only known each other a day, and they had communicated minimally at the very best. And yet, likely because of his lack of real memories, Umbra considered Sam to be a good friend.

He wasn't sure if that was weird or not, considering his circumstances, so he didn't voice that opinion. He just watched as the Militia Pilot next to him, his __friend, __continued to shift along the ground, an unrecoverable injury slowly gnawing at his mortality.

Or perhaps Umbra didn't see him as a friend. Perhaps he saw him more as an ally.

__An ally?__

__On the Frontier, the words "friend" and "ally" are usually the same thing.__

Umbra sat there. He wanted to say something, but his instincts told him that Sam wasn't done talking; the Pilot just needed a while to find the right words.

As the automaton had guessed, Sam was talking again, a little bit stronger and more clearly than last time.

"... I'm not gonna last the night, am I?" Umbra moved to respond, but he continued. "Heh. Of course I'm not. I can feel the bits of metal making their way up my body now… I'd be lucky to last the hour, actually."

Without any prior warning, and to Umbra's surprise, Sam leaned forward and grabbed the dark simulacrum by the shoulder, yanking him around so they were forced to look at each other.

Slowly, precariously, Sam removed his Pilot helmet. Umbra was met with a young man in his late twenties, with a well-rounded face and blond hair. He had a beard growing along his lower face, but it seemed recently shaved.

"I know what you're going through man." Sam began, coughing up a storm for a moment before going on. "I know what it's like to have to find yourself again, because my sister went through the same thing."

__Can't say I remember having any family myself, but sure.__

Umbra didn't dare interrupt Sam. Considering that he guy had only the night to live, he wanted to give him as many opportunities as possible to talk. Sam took this opportunity.

"We used to live like everyone else on the Frontier. Just me and my sister, tending to the farmland… When the IMC came, they bombed practically the entire place. My sister was caught in the middle of it. The bombings put her in a coma, with third degree burns over 70% of her body… I made the decision to let the Militia turn her into a simulacrum, but for maybe the first year or so… It was tough. She didn't recognize me for two weeks. We had to keep giving her memory triggers so that she would remember herself, and even then… She just wasn't __herself __for that entire year.

"You're going through that same process, I see it. And maybe you won't ever find yourself, because there won't be anyone to help give you back your memories… But you just gotta remember to stick it out. It always gets better, you know?"

Sam ended his sentence short with another coughing fit. Umbra held him down as he doubled back on himself intensely.

He wanted to say something in response, but Umbra managed to keep himself quiet. __If he wants me to speak, he'll ask me to. Just keep your mouth shut otherwise.__

Sam' grip on Umbra's shoulder weakened, so the simulacrum raised his free arm up to hold the Pilot's hand in place. He nodded, then started going again, his voice cracked.

"You need to keep going without me. Don't be afraid to use my Titan. She may be quiet, but that just how she handles herself; Quiet and professional. Use my jumpkit. I've seen how you handle yourself, you'll make a fine Pilot.

"Make sure the IMC doesn't take you. I don't know what kind of tech you're hiding behind that tin body, but it __must__ reach the Militia. Do you understand?"

Umbra didn't respond immediately, so Sam repeated his question, with more vigor behind his voice. "__Do you understand, __Umbra?"

"Yes."

Sam heaved a deep sigh, Umbra could see high eyelids closely, but somehow, the Pilot just kept going, even though he looked to be losing consciousness.

"And keep my… keep my sister safe. Keep Jules safe. Tell her I love her, and tell her I'm sorry for leaving…"

Umbra felt the hand on his shoulder loosen, and the bot moved quickly to catch Sam's head as it fell back.

He felt for a pulse on the unconscious Pilot, and found one; it was weak, however, and quickly fading. By Umbra's guess, Sam had only a couple minutes to live, and he was going live those last minutes out in a peaceful coma.

Umbra sat there, silent, unsure what to do, until after what seemed like an eternity, Sam's heart rate died away completely, and his breathing stopped.

Umbra looked back into the dark background of the firelight, at Sam's Titan. The Monarch was trying it's best to hide it, but it was obviously having a difficult time simply standing there. It's singular blue optic kept flying from Sam's fresh corpse to Umbra, and then back again, and all the while it looked as if it were on the verge of losing control.

Umbra nodded to the green-gray colored Titan respectfully before tuning back to Sam's body. He shifted the arms of the corpse so that the hands crossed over each other atop the still chest, as a sign of respect towards Sam's body.

Both Umbra and the Titan watched him lay there, motionless, for about a minute or so, and then Umbra picked up the body and carried it out into the field to be buried. He had no excavation equipment, so all Umbra could do was begin digging with his metal fingers; but that didn't do much, since the night cold had essentially frozen the dirt solid.

Sam's Titan - now apparently Umbra's - stomped up behind him and, in a single movement, scooped out enough soil from the ground to form a suitable grave. Umbra nodded his thanks silently, then gently picked Sam's corpse up again, and deposited it into the fresh hole carefully, where they used the unearthed dirt to engulf him out of sight. Before they did that, Umbra took Sam's jumpkit and the comm chip from the side of his helmet, and he put the jumpkit on himself and slipped the chip into a slot in the back of his metal head. He listened carefully for comm chatter for a while, switching channels a couple times, but he heard nothing.

Finally, before they'd put the final load of cold dirt over his head, Umbra retrieved a long, gray and blue scarf from around Sam's neck. It was made of surprisingly wealthy fabric, and Umbra wore it around his titanium neck with pride, even if he didn't need it.

Letting out a long, mechanical sigh, Umbra turned to the Titan who stood in the darkness beside him, towering over him by at least 17 feet or so.

"So," he started, as calmly as possible, "I guess we're stuck together now, huh?"

The Titan didn't respond.

__I guess Sam wasn't kidding about her being quiet. Come to think of it, I haven't heard her say anything all day.__

He was about to ask for her name or designation, but as his optic adjusted to the night, he saw the writing printed into the side of her chassis, along the hatch rim.

_"___SC-0046."__

"SC, is that it? How about I call you that?"

SC still didn't respond, but she seemed to show some spark of approval at the sound of her name, and her optic didn't quite portray as much passive aggressiveness as before.

__Alright, let's get this over with.__

Pilot-Titan links weren't easy to create and maintain, especially if one of them had just recently lost their partner, or some other similar event. If Umbra was correct, he would probably have to rodeo SC all the way to the extraction point. However, he figured it was worth giving it a shot anyways.

He motioned with a wave of his arm for SC to open her hatch, and she complied surprisingly fast, kneeling low and opening up the cockpit.

__Here goes nothing.__

Umbra half expected himself to be wary of what he was about to so, but he surprised himself by climbing into the cockpit with almost no hesitation. He sat down against the leather interior, letting the natural cushions fully engulf his titanium frame.

The hatch closed in his face suddenly, and he was engulfed in pitch black. After a second or two, several green lasers started to scan the cockpit, running up and down Umbra several times before disappearing blatantly.

__Huh. That wasn't so bad-__

Pain seized his conscious in an instant, engulfing it in mental flame and blinding of ocular systems. He thought he was holding his head with one of his arms, but he couldn't be sure, since he felt like his data banks were being contorted and twisted out of their sockets in his titanium simulacrum head.

Something as simple as a straight thought became unbearably heavy and painful. After what Umbra could only guess was about ten seconds, he felt his systems beginning to shut down, and he knew he would have to stop soon if he wanted to stay running.

__No. I have to do this. __We __have to do this.__

With a final, effort-filled push, Umbra gritted his mind the best he could and prepared himself to take another wave of inward pain as his computerized brain attempted to establish a connection again.

And then it was all over.

Umbra was thrown back into his conscious self. He flexed his hydraulic muscles, thankful that he could at least feel __something __again.

He looked around the cockpit, and was elated to find that he could see outside the Titan clearly. It was a minor difference, given that it was still nighttime outside, but when Umbra moved one of his arms, SC moved her arm in perfect synchronization, with absolutely no delay or miscalculation.

__A near perfect link.__

_… ___And I nearly fried my circuits to get to it.__

"Alright SC." he said, shifting himself in his seat a little better. "let's get moving. Mark the target location on our HUDs. We have a long ways to go yet."

"We shouldn't have brought him to Angel City, Pulaski!"

Dr. Mallard was angry, furious even. Despite his growing age, and arthritis, the old scientist paced back and forth across the conference room, his teeth grinding together in such a painful manner that Dr. Pulaski had to drown out the sharp noise before answering.

"I had no __choice, __Mallard. You know how the system works. General Marder wanted to see a test trail of the prototype __before __he approved funding for stage 2 testing-"

"Well next time tell him to come to __our facility __instead! At least we know how to secure a __single subject __properly!"

A coughing noise was heard from across the room. Both scientists turned to look at a holographic image of General Marder, who looked to be standing there for quite some time.

Mallard sighed, cupping his face in his hands tiredly and muttering something to himself. Pulaski turned his full attention to the General, almost frantically.

"Am I interrupting something, gentlemen?" the General asked, his arms crossed over his chest as if he were posing. Pulaski shook his head vigorously. "No General. We, uh, were simply expecting you to call earlier."

"Is there an update regarding the missing Mark II Simulacrum Unit, Dr. Pulaski?"

Dr. Mallard looked as if he wanted more than anything else to leave the room. Pulaski cleared his throat nervously and straightened his overcoat.

"No update yet, General. I contacted Blisk, and it sounds like our prototype has managed to escape it's IMC escort. I have the Apex mercenaries tracking it down as we speak, however… it looks as though it has turned to the Militia for help instead of us."

General Marder said nothing for a long while. In regards to most people, that would be a good thing more or less, but when Marder was silent, that typically meant he was barely keeping his temper contained.

"... So he __doesn't __remember who he is." the General finally said, shifting his weight to the other foot.

Dr. Mallard decided to speak up this time. "I seriously doubt it. If he was in his full mindset, he would realize what he was carrying in his simulacrum code, and he would choose his actions more wisely."

The General shrugged his shoulders in ignorant confusion. He clearly did not know the full extent of the situation. "So your new prototype has some advance reflex capabilities, so what Dr. Mallard? We'll have your Mark II Unit back in time before the Militia can analyze it."

"It's not just enhanced combat capabilities, General."

At those words, Dr. Mallard not only had the full attention of Marder, but even Pulaski, who had no idea what his fellow scientist was talking about. Dr. Mallard stood there, silent, with a look of minor panic continuing to grow along his age-stretched face.

"I created a virus. It's nearly impossible to trace because it's only about 30 command lines in the Mark II's systems… By command, the virus is supposed to be able to bypass nearly any security network, and… take control of the electronic entity behind the security…"

Pulaski groaned in his ever-growing stress levels. General Marder cursed silently under his breath, and then started to walk away from where he was standing, slowly disappearing from the hologram. "I want that simulacrum found, __NOW.__"


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Three:**

****Audio Log 2 - Umbra****

__Sam is dead.__

__I didn't know him for very long, and yet… in that brief time, I regarded him as a brother before he passed. I still do.__

__I'm not sure if his team of Pilots will meet me at the extract point. Or how they'll react to a Vinson Dynamics simulacrum Piloting SC in Sam's place. I'm not even sure if they'll accept me on the evacuation ship without Sam to wave me through.__

_… ___All I know is, I need to do what he asked of me before he died. I need to get myself to the Militia fleet, and I need to find his sister. Jules was her name, I think. Another simulacrum, just like me.__

__... Or, a little like me. Unlike the original simulacrum body, my build seems to be suited to adapt a more versatile sort of combat - I'm definitely still agile enough to act as a Pilot, but all my torso wiring is almost completely covered in titanium plates, and my limbs seem to be a little more wavy and thick in design.__

__I've also discovered the ability to phase shift, which is fairly standard for combat simulacrums; except that I can stay in the other dimension for almost a full minute.__

__That's not even the best equipment piece I found. I was examining the flexibility of my left arm, when I nearly slashed a hole through the cockpit interior… with a plasma blade.__

__It seems that my model is designed to reserve and store energy as efficiently as possible, and a large portion of that energy, over time, can be channeled into a reserved plasma blade that comes out from the top of my wrist, about 12 or so inches out.__

__I didn't have much time to take a closer look at this "plasma blade." From my guess, an average charge would allow the blade to last roughly 8 or 10 seconds, max.__

__Seeing a weapon that strong made me wonder what else Vinson Dynamics might have packed inside me to make me a better killing machine. The blade was interesting, but yet, also a little terrifying.__

__If I end up giving this technology to the wrong kind of person… what sort of a monster could I unleash?__

****End Log****

The day wore along like the slow ticking of time. It dragged by like the heat of the sun above, and Umbra was quite glad that he was inside the air conditioned Titan cockpit instead of out in the hot weather, even if he was a simulacrum.

They were 2 kilometers out from the pinpointed extraction point on the map, just up north. They were in perhaps the deepest parts of the Agricultural District, with the farmland and the occasional abandoned, wrecked barn stretching out as far as the eye - or optic - could see.

Gunshots could be heard loud and clear. SC, as usual, didn't say anything, but she instead alerted Umbra of nearby IMC forces through a notification on her on-board HUD. Her constant silence still had a tendency to throw Umbra off, but he just kept reassuring himself, remembering that Sam specifically pointed that trait out to him before dying.

__So they're expecting a Militia extraction here.__

__I guess that either means they got lucky, or someone tipped them off.__

That was a situation to confront later. For now, Umbra needed to clear the area to allow for a Militia transport to fly in safely.

A squad of about 6 IMC Riflemen walked out from behind a shattered barn house, onto the dirt road. Two of them started backing up, aiming at SC with AT-SMR launchers frantically.

Umbra boosted his Titan forward, crushing two of the grunts into a bloody pulp on the ground. He skillfully picked up two more soldiers into his vortex shield, and launched them at deadly speeds towards the two grunts armed with anti-Titan launchers. The flying bodies knocked one of them about ten or so meters down the road, effectively killing them, but one last soldier remained, and they managed to get a shot into SC before Umbra could turn and smash them to a useless pancake of flesh and bone all over the soil.

The shields were gone from the short barrage of micro-missiles, and Umbra could see some warning symbols in the corner of his HUD telling him there was minor hydraulic damage.

"Alright SC," he said to his Titan, focusing his attention on the two dropships full of IMC soldiers that were coming his way, "guess it's time to stop screwing around, huh?"

He took her lack of a direct response as an answer.

SC's sensors detected a total of at least 24 enemy Rifleman, of which a third or so of them likely had anti-Titan weaponry. He also took note of 2 Reapers, which he decided he would focus on taking down first.

The extraction point was in the center of a grove of tall-rising trees and several similar looking barns that rose about three stories high. One of the barns had part of its roof caved in from an explosion, and nearly the entire building was charred black from a fire that had long since died out. Umbra suspected that the environment would be much worse than just that by the time he was extracted.

He rounded a corner in the dirt road, coming out from behind a thicket of trees that were tall enough to conceal SC's chassis visually. The first squad of IMC attacked, backed by a Reaper. Umbra boosted to one side when a barrage of micro-missiles were shot at him. He caught the missiles in his vortex shield as he dodged, and he used them on the Reaper, blasting them at the white-plated automaton.

The squad of 4 IMC all started to run, and they were gunned down by a single spray line of 20mm rounds from SC's Chain Gun.

Umbra started to jog SC down what was a rough dirt roundabout that formed inside the circlet of barns that were in the grove. He stopped to take aim at the next Reaper, which was accompanied by a team of about 8 IMC Riflemen.

Umbra fired a burst of salvo missiles at the group of grunts, which blasted 5 of them to pieces and sent the rest scrambling for cover like fleeing rats. The Reaper rushed the Militia Titan, attempting to flank it and get a few lucky hits into her lower hydraulics. Umbra lunged out with an outstretched Titan arm and caught the Reaper by the base of it's leg, where he picked it up, turned it sideways, and slammed it against the ground as hard as he could. The machine popped and made a sizzling sound, it's backside cracked and damaged from the blunt-force action. It still struggled in SC's grasp however, so Umbra bashed it into the hard ground again to ensure it's destruction before flinging the remains of it's tattered metal body at a group of three hostile Riflemen who were trying to run from one barn to the next.

The destroyed Reaper caught all of them, crushing them under it's weight. Whatever they were trying to reach, Umbra made sure it would never be used, since he started firing down on the barn with salvo missiles and his Chain Gun until it was little more than a burning, smoking wreck.

Communication chatter picked up on the IMC channel. Umbra listened intently.

_"___This is Blisk. All available Apex mercenaries, converge on the location I've marked on our HUDs. The 17____th____Armored Footmobile reported a Monarch class Militia Titan assaulting them at the Slavo barns."__

He sounded surprisingly emotional for a hardened mercenary, perhaps even angry. Umbra made a mental note to keep in mind the Apex Predator's arrival at some point.

There was a flash on his HUD, warning him on an incoming titanfall. If Umbra had to guess, he would assume it was either an IMC Pilot or a Vinson Dynamics mercenary coming to claim him, since it would have been nearly impossible for Apex to reach him that quickly.

There were a few seconds where a bright flash in the sky became distinguishable with the tedious trembling of the world all around the farmland.

The rumbling ended with a world-shattering crash as a Titan made contact with the ground, fresh out of titanfall. It was an Ion class, and bore the classic gray-white coloration of the IMC.

Umbra raised the Chain Gun to it and opened fire. The hostile Titan ducked behind cover, and Umbra guided SC in pursuit after the Ion a little recklessly, stomping over a couple fleeing IMC soldiers and crushing them.

He lost sight of the Ion for a split second in the trees. When he came around the corner, clumsily, it burst out from behind cover of one of the tall-rising barns and starting firing with it's Splitter Rifle.

SC's shields, which had just finished recharging, were wiped away by the close-range barrage of laser damage almost instantly. Umbra charged forward and tackled the Ion, sending their massive Splitter Rifle tumbling across the dirt, but his Titan had already paid the price with the loss of her cooling system. Usually, a Titan could function just fine without a cooling system, but it meant that they couldn't boost out of the line of fire or run about too much, in case the core overheated.

Since Umbra couldn't technically run away without frying SC's core to a crisp, he instead continued to attack the IMC Titan in close-up hand to hand.

The Ion flashed a heavy, mechanical cut fist out at the Militia Titan's hatch, but SC managed to duck and dodge in time. Using an opportunity he saw, Umbra grabbed one of the Ion's legs while they were in mid-swing, and he pulled back on it with as much force as possible.

The IMC Titan was caught off balance, and it ended up on it's side, dazed for a split second or two. In that moment, SC clambered atop the opponent and, with a firm grip, she punctured a hole in the cockpit and flung the IMC Pilot out of his chair, about thirty or so meters into the air. While he was falling back down, SC looked up, aimed, and slung her fist out, turning the Pilot into a spray of bloody pulp that sprinkled back down to the farmland.

There were only a few members of the 17th Armored Footmobile that had the misfortune of being stationed at that location, and after seeing one of their Pilots die, they turned and ran, scattering into the fields and the occasional sparse shrubbery. Despite the fact that they might bring reinforcements, Umbra decided to let them flee without chasing them down.

After that, the place seemed almost… deserted. After Umbra was done using SC's chassis to push and move all the corpses into a pile in a field, so he could burn them, everything was eerily quiet.

Too quiet.

It was like the calm before the storm - and that metaphor would be correct, if Apex Predators were really on their way. __All I can do I pray that someone picks me up first.__

Umbra disembarked SC and scaled on of the higher rising barns out of the five or so. He looked over the horizon of the long running Agricultural District, but saw nothing spare the occasional house or cluster of trees.

He jumped off the roof, landing on top of SC to inspect her for damage. From what he remembered, Monarch Titans had their cooling systems running all throughout the chassis, through tubes that connected to a motor pumping the coolant. It was likely that one of the tubes had been exposed in the battle, and ultimately damaged, which was why the system wasn't working properly.

Umbra's hypothesis was confirmed when he looked over one of SC's large shoulders and caught site of a loose, broken tube that was spewing flat-colored coolant out of it, all over the ground.

__Great. Even if I can patch that up, I've probably lost too much coolant for it to make a difference anyways.__

Umbra opened the top hatch into the cockpit, and then stopped halfway into the chassis to pat SC on the chassis gently. "Alright SC, let's see what we can do for you."

He sat there, sitting partly through the hatch for a few moments, hoping for a response. To his surprise, SC lifted her arm and gave him a small thumbs up.

It was only a minor gesture of social recognition, but it was certainly an improvement from complete silence. Satisfied, Umbra chuckled before disappearing into the cockpit to take control, closing the top hatch behind him.

Both SC and him watched the grove area intently for about 15 minutes, Chain Gun raised and at the ready for the arrival of Apex Predators. It occurred to Umbra the likelihood that he would either be captured or destroyed if the entire mercenary group found him, but he tried his best to stay positive, telling himself that he'd be long extracted before anyone reached Slavo barns. __Assuming the Militia will even take me.__

All he could do was hope, since really, that was all he had by then. Hope, and some form of gritty determination that he couldn't explain.

SC reported movement to the west, about a kilometer out from where they were, however she didn't mention that the movement was hostile. Still, Umbra directed her towards the edge of the Slavo property, where he stared out into the slightly foggy distance.

Sure enough, he counted three Titans walking along a winding dirt path towards the extraction point - a Ronin, an Ion, and a Scorch. They definitely weren't Apex Predators however, or even IMC. Instead, the Titans bore the coloration and the markings of the Militia, and when Umbra looked even closer he saw the blue-white-black emblem of the Warmonger Corps, which was one of the many subdivisions of the SRS. It was the same emblem that Umbra had observed on Sam's uniform sleeve, as well as SC's chassis.

__This is Sam's squad, most likely.__

__What will I tell them when they find out I'm not him? If I tell them the truth, would they believe me?__

He could hear a buzzing static sound coming from the Militia comm channel; Umbra had almost forgotten he took the link from Sam's helmet before burying it with him. The static was reduced to a hum within seconds, and then it dissipated away, replaced completely by a distinct feminine voice. It would have sounded AI, had it not a level of personality and unique form to it.

_"___Sam, are you there? It's Jules. We caught your distress signal while we were looking for you in District 12, you alright?"__

__Dammit.__

At a loss for words, Umbra simply stood there in his Titan, watching them approach. He knew he was escaping the inevitable, but he still desperately clung to the impossible desire that he would find the magic response to keep Sam's squad from shooting first, then asking questions later.

_"___Sam," Jules said again through the radio, "is your radio down or something? Respond."__

She sounded genuinely concerned, which for some reason gave Umbra a feeling of guilt in his mechanical insides(If a robot could __physically __feel that).

It was a meaningless sort of guilt from his perspective, since he knew logically he couldn't have done anything to save her brother.

__Or could I have?__

__Maybe if I'd kept a closer eye on him during the day. Maybe if I'd tried another method of keeping the shrapnel out of him. Maybe…__

The convoy of Titans was fast approaching by then, and was within a hundred meters of SC. Since the Monarch Titan wasn't likely to speak in any way, that pretty much left Umbra to explain everything on his own, which wasn't going to make the situation any easier. __So let's just get this over with, then.__

Umbra closed his optic for a moment, then opened it again. He took a deep-sounding breath, and then he got up from his seat, the front hatch opening slowly as he did so.

The group of Titans continued to stomp down the street. They obviously hadn't noticed a thing yet. They stopped, one by one, when they came around the corner of the path they were travelling on, leading them into the grove and towards the country-themed roundabout inside the loosely-packed barns.

The Ion raised their Splitter Rifle specifically at the black simulacrum as soon as they'd seen it sitting inside SC. The Scorch stopped in their tracks, and seemed to be debating what to do.

The Ronin-class Titan phase-dashed all the way over to SC, until it was within grabbing reach, and it stopped right in front of Umbra, close enough for him to jump on top of it assuming he used his jumpkit. The Ronin's hatch flipped open, and out stood a female Stim Pilot simulacrum, an R-201 in hand. She - who Umbra assumed to be Jules - raised her rifle at him, and he answered by raising his hands over his head in calm surrender.

"Jules," Umbra stammered, "I can explain." He tried to sound trusting, which was fairly difficult considering he was pretty sure his voice was programmed to sound deep and a little frightening.

She didn't respond right away, and Umbra thought it was likely because she couldn't find the right words. The other two Titans in her squad surrounded Umbra and SC, their weapons trained specifically on him, but not the Titan he was riding in.

There was only one way out of the situation now, and that was by talking his way out.

Umbra thought he could see Jules shaking, but his attention was diverted by her words a second later, which were bone-cuttingly cold and to the point.

"Tell me why the __hell __I shouldn't take your stupid tin head off those hideous shoulders, Pilot!"

__So… was that a question, or just her anger talking?__

__Also, go ahead and shoot me. If I'm correct, and I'm made out of titanium, it'll take a heck of a lot more than a carbine to put me out of commission.__

Subconsciously, he went back on his last thought; she could still get a lucky hit in between the plates, which might damage something.

He realized that she actually __was __waiting for a response, and he cursed at himself silently for his stupidity before quickly thinking of something to say.

"Because I didn't kill Sam."

"I don't believe you."

Umbra shrugged his dark coloured shoulders, hoping to show her just how serious he was.

"Alright then," he said, leaning back a bit into the cockpit, "don't believe me. But why else would I be in his Titan?"

She seemed determined to put the blame on him, since she was still quick to shout back at him. "Well you could've killed him or something, and then tricked Sierra into believing you didn't kill him! Why else would she let you control her?"

__Sierra.__

__So they had a nickname for SC.__

__Good. Just calling her "SC" was getting a little bland.__

He groaned in slight resignation, bending forward and placing a metal hand over his face, closing it around his optic. __Jeez, I wish Sierra would actually __do __something to help me out here…__

He sat back up, determined to try again to convince them of his innocence.

Thinking a little more out of the box, Umbra reached for the gray-blue scarf that was sitting around his neck stylishly. Jules kept her weapon raised valiantly, but when she saw what he was doing, it lowered just the tiniest bit, her guard thrown off at the sight of her brother's scarf.

The article of clothing even seemed to stir something in the rest of Sam's squad, because the Scorch and Ion Titan closed the circle on themselves a take a closer look at what was going on.

"Put… put that down!" Jules shouted, readjusting her aim on Umbra's triangle-shaped head. Umbra pretended that he didn't hear the order. He unwrapped the scarf from around him and held it, dangling, in a single arm. It fluttered and twisted a bit in the light breeze. Umbra could see Jules leaning forward a bit to stare at it, despite her obvious efforts to stop herself. It was right then that he thought of - what he considered - the perfect words to calm her down.

"He would have wanted you to have this. That's why I held onto it… he wanted me to tell you he was sorry."

She had completely lowered her weapon by then, and seemed to be staring at something else completely, something that was in her mind instead of in reality. Umbra jumped down onto the rough dirt below, taking care not to drop the scarf. He walked about half the distance from Sierra to Jules' Titan, where he waited patiently for her next action. He considered the possibility that she might just climb back in her Titan and crush him right there, but he tried his best to convince himself it was a risk worth taking.

He looked around, noticing that the other two Pilots had opened their hatches and were watching quite intently. One was a Tracker-class Pilot, and he slung a mastiff over his shoulders almost recklessly. The other was a heavy-set Cloak-class Pilot, and he toyed with a boomerang knife in one hand, with quite a bit of skill Umbra thought.

They all seemed neutral at this point, which Umbra was grateful for since they were much less likely to kill him, but he knew he wasn't completely done talking his way out of the situation yet.

It took a while, longer than anticipated, but Jules eventually snapped out of her strange trance-like stance, and she looked down at Umbra. He half expected her to start shooting at him then, but to his surprise, she suddenly propped her carbine in her seat and jumped down to the ground beside him.

"Jules, what are you...?" The Tracker Pilot started to talk, rather bluntly, but he seemed to stop himself for unknown reasons. Jules walked up to Umbra, slowly, stopping when she was about a meter away.

She paused for a long time, and Umbra was about to move the scarf even closer to her, when all of a sudden she took it gently from his loose grasp.

She looked down at it as it sat in her simulacrum hands. She made several low level noises, and if Umbra couldn't tell any better, he would have guessed that she would have been crying if she could.

Instead, she squeezed the scarf tightly in her grip, as if to say that she valued it now beyond anything, and she slowly bundled it up and put it in a thin pouch around her back.

"Is that all he told you?" she asked. She sounded more sorrowful than words could comprehend, and her voice, despite being tuned by her simulacrum existence, was cracked and unstable.

"No." Umbra muttered, choosing his following words carefully. "He told me to tell you that he loved you." He didn't mention the first part of the sentence he'd heard it from. He didn't dare.

_"___And keep my… keep my sister safe. Keep Jules safe."__

Umbra wasn't ready to tell her that yet. Or anyone, for that matter. He would just have to find a way to do it discreetly for the time being.

The moment, which in Umbra's mind, was filled with appropriate solemnity for Sam, ended up being shattered by the Tracker Pilot, who decided to speak up again.

"Come on Jules, you don't serious believe bullshit, do you? He's IMC, look at the patch on his shoulder-"

"I'm __not __IMC."

Umbra found himself looking directly at the Pilot, his words piercingly strong. They were so strong, in fact, that the Pilot raised his hands in a gesture of pacifism before backing into his Titan a little.

"Listen, I don't know who the hell I was before I was a simulacrum." Umbra retorted, "But I refuse to associate myself with the IMC until I find out __what __they did to me and __why.__"

A gray dot started to grow, slowly, in the distance, followed by two more dots. The shaped started to form as they came closer, and Umbra recognized the shapes as two Widow transports and a Crow escort. The ships caught the attention of the other Pilots, as well as the Titans, and the colors became clear enough to distinguish them as Militia.

__Finally, the extraction ships are here. __Personally, they couldn't have had better timing in his mind, although he suspected the others would disagree.

To his relief, Umbra's blatant response to the one Pilot's words seemed to shut up the group of them, because they said nothing to the black simulacrum as the escort convoy began it's descent, slowing down and spreading out to allow room for each other.

Both the Tracker and the Cloak-class Pilots disembarked their Titans and joined Jules at her side in front of Umbra. The Titans - including Sierra - all started making their way to the two Widow cargo ships that were sitting on standby near the road some ways down the grove.

As Sierra started to stomp away from Umbra, she looked back at him, her optic focusing on him specifically. He thought he saw her flash a look of reassurance and trust at him, but he couldn't be sure. Seconds later, she was gone with the other Titans, loaded onto the Widows which immediately started to take off into the late afternoon sky.

The Crow dropship was waiting on standby for the four Pilots, but even when Umbra was ready to leave, the others didn't seem eager to go.

__Which is understandable, I guess. They all want to know they can trust me enough to let me on their ship, which would probably take me to the Militia fleet.__ It would be any IMC spy's dream to stumble across the location of an enemy fleet.

But Umbra wasn't a spy. He was an identity-confused prototype simulacrum with extreme lethal capabilities, who's only personal goal was to follow the commands of a dead Pilot who he hardly knew.

When he thought about it all at once, it all sounded jumbled and kind of incomplete. But it was all he had right then, and he had to find a way to show that to the Pilots in front of him.

Out of nowhere, to everyone's shock in the clearing, Jules spoke up, her voice still broken, but perhaps renewed with unnamed determination: "I trust him. Sierra wouldn't have let him live if he killed Sam." She abruptly pulled Sam's scarf out of her pouch and tossed it back to Umbra, who caught it hesitantly. "Actually, I'd reckon he'd want __you __to have it. Finders-keepers sort of thing."

Umbra nodded his appreciation, hastily wrapping the decorative clothing around his neck and shoulders again.

The Tracker Pilot looked as if he were about to say something again, but then the Cloak Pilot stepped forward, extending a hand out to be shook. The gesture was a bit formal, Umbra found, but he grasped the outstretched hand anyways, shaking it briefly. The Pilot grunted, and Umbra released his grip. Apparently he was still unaware of his strength capabilities.

"My name is Tacks," the Cloak Pilot said, curtly, "and this psycho across from me is Pedro… Just ignore him, okay? If Jules says she trusts you, that's all we need to hear to trust you too."

Tacks shot a look at Pedro, in a mock reprimanding sort of way. "__Right, __Pedro? "Right.""

"Hey, what the hell did I say?" Pedro demanded, turning around and jogging to the dropship. He obviously had a smile on his face underneath the helmet.

In response to Tacks' introduction, Umbra decided to formalize the occasional a bit with his own summary of himself.

"The name's Umbra. I have no idea who I am, and I'm here to help… probably."

Tacks chuckled, although Umbra couldn't tell if it was in amusement or nervousness. He gave a quick nod, then ran to the Crow to join Pedro.

Jules continued to stand there, for much longer than normal; in fact, it was taking her so long to get moving that umbra began to walk towards the ship first. He stopped as he was passing her, and he gave her a fast tap on the steel shoulder, which seemed to break her out of whatever distracted world she was stuck in.

"You coming?" he asked, gently. She nodded, and the two of them ran across the clearing to the dropship, hopping up the ramp into the seating area just as the ship started to climb altitude.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Four:**

****Audio Log 3 - Umbra****

__Seeing Sam's team for the first time felt… Oddly familiar.__

__The members in the team weren't familiar, but just the aura of being in or around a squad of Pilots… I don't know. It feels natural somehow. Maybe it's a connection to my past. Who knows?__

__Right now though, I have no time to be seeking answers to my life. I have to be focusing on what's ahead of me instead.__

__The extraction convoy brought us to the MCS Rutledge, which was sitting just out of Angel City's atmosphere. By the looks of it, it'll be staying there for a long time, providing assistance and aid to the countless number of smaller Militia ships that are coming back and forth between the City and the carrier. There were other carriers, about two, but I can't say I know the names of any of them… Apparently I'm no expert on Militia naval counterparts. All I know is, the Militia is definitely using all of their invading power to take Angel City.__

__As someone who's been down there for a day or two, I can honestly say that the battlefield is so stretched out that the invasion's turned into a half-baked stalemate: Neither sides are losing, but… Neither are winning either. It's just one big empty battleground down there, with small-sized shootouts and Titan fights.__

__I'm sitting in a holding room right now. I think the Rifleman who escorted me there specifically chose the word "room" instead of "cell" because he didn't want his head ripped off… Poor kid. At least he didn't confiscate my personal belongings, like this data pad.__

__I still don't know what they're going to do with me. They can analyze me all I want, on the condition that I'm not harmed, and that I know what they're going to do with what they find. I may trust the Militia more than the IMC, but that doesn't mean they're incapable of terrible things.__

__I haven't seen Sam's squad all day. We hardly talked on the flight to the carrier, and they just… left as soon as the transport was docked.__

__I hope Jules is okay. Not really because I care for her a whole lot(Although I can empathize with her greatly), but more because of the request that Sam made before he died.__

__Never cross a dead man's words. Somehow, I feel if I don't at least follow through with Sam's requests… I may never relieve the need to find purpose.__

****End Log****

Everything was silent, except for the metallic buzz of the white light dimly lighting up the box room. The room was kept completely clean and plain-looking, with each gray wall looking identical, spare the one side that had the 2-way mirror, from which someone was probably watching Umbra. There was also the automatic sliding door, but it didn't take a genius to guess that the red light in the middle of it signaled that it was clearly locked.

Umbra sat there, his hydraulics unmoving and his optic coming in and out of focus, for about an hour or so by his estimate. He wanted to remain professional - the last thing he needed to do was make a bad impression - but by the time 2 hours had gone by, he was pacing the room restlessly, stopping every once in a while to lean against the table and look at himself in the 2-way mirror while tapping his heavy, black titanium feet.

From the dimness of the room, and the discoloration of the mirror(And his distinct black coating), it was hard to see all the details of his simulacrum body. He took particular notice of the fact that his build size was somewhere between a Stalker and a Mark I simulacrum. It was certainly manoeuvrable enough for just about any use, but unlike the rather skinny limbs and bulky torso that the Mark I had, Umbra's body was much more evenly spread out across each area. Umbra dared say it was more "humanoid." Almost like, if he removed all his inner workings, he would maybe function as a suit of armor for someone.

In the middle of his wedge-shaped triangle head emitted a lone thick strip of white light, where his single wide-angle optic sat underneath. He stared at this light for a long time, trying to see through it to his artificial eye. Trying to see some sort of life.

He could only see a machine, no matter how hard he looked. And that terrified him, more than anything terrified him before. It was the sort of terror that came from when a person couldn't recognize themselves anymore. The kind of terror that came when they could potentially be a monster, but they would never be sure of that fact.

__Maybe I'm just reading into this too much.__

He doubted the thought as soon as it had processed through his databanks. He wished beyond anything that he could get rid of the artificial headache that was building up in his conscience.

Umbra observed the blue and white IMC emblem that was stamped onto his left shoulder. Raising a metal hand to it, he tried to use the finer edges of his finger to scrape it off, but to no avail.

The sliding door opened with a whoosh of wind. Footsteps were heard behind Umbra.

"You don't have to try scratching that off. If you prove yourself loyal to the Militia, I'll have someone laser it off your shoulder for you."

Umbra turned to face the female voice, which turned out to be a short, slender Pilot who had her helmet on despite being out of combat. She sat down in the "interrogator" chair and motioned for Umbra to do the same, in the other chair across the table. He did so, slowly, keeping in mind that everything he said or did from then on would be observed and likely recorded.

"So." the Pilot started, looking down at a wrist pad and pressing a few buttons on it before continuing. "Let us begin, shall we? Let's start with your statement to W-COR Fireteam Bravo-Alpha."

She seemed to be scrolling through something on her datapad, and Umbra was about to attempt to quote what he'd said when she said it herself, reading it off her tiny screen.

" _"___The name's Umbra. I have no idea who I am, and I'm here to help… probably." __"

She stopped looking at her datapad, instead switching her gaze to Umbra directly. He couldn't see it, but he could feel her gaze practically burning into his metal body strongly.

"What are we supposed to do with you, Umbra? Hm? We can't throw you out the airlock, because officially you aren't perceived as an actual threat yet... But we're a long way from having reason to trust you." She raised a hand and made a small gesture. "Here's your chance to tell us why we should keep you alive. Speak."

Umbra collected his thoughts and assessed the appropriate response before saying a word back, which took him a moment or two.

"I'm a prototype. Probably a Mark II version of the original simulacrum… I have advanced technology that I want to share with the Militia, on certain conditions."

"And what would those conditions be?"

"First, I don't want any harm done to me in any way. I don't think that'll be a problem anyways, but just in case… Second, I want to know what you will do with the technology you analyze on me."

The Pilot looked at her datapad again, as if to check the time. Umbra thought he saw a new notification on the screen, but she pulled her arm out of view too quickly for him to see any details. She looked up at the room for a moment, mimicking the movement of someone in serious thought ,and then her head dropped back down to stare at Umbra once more.

"I'll be honest, I personally don't know what we'll do with the tech." she muttered, kicking her feet up on the table. "But you can be sure it'll be put to good use. __Proper __use. And you won't even be touched in the process, we'll probably just ask you to run through some harmless field tests."

Umbra wasn't sure what to think of a rather vague and perhaps suspicious response like that, but he decided rather quickly that he didn't have much other choice than to trust her words.

He was tempted to just agree to do the tests, so that he could be let out of the room as soon as possible; however, he wanted to make sure that he fulfilled the rest of Sam's promise, and that meant pressing the Pilot for one more request.

"... I agree to take whatever tests or experiments that you might have for me, on one __more __condition."

The woman threw her hands up in mock compliance. "Sure, name __whatever __you want! Because you __totally __have all the freedom in the world to be making demands right now."

Umbra tried his best to ignore the snarky warning.

"I want to be assigned to Fireteam Bravo-Alpha, as a replacement for Sergeant Samuel Braddock."

The Pilot's initial reaction was complete silence, for about 3 seconds. And then she burst into hefty laughter, her sides heaving and her head shaking form side to side by the time she was done.

"You can't be __serious__…" she stuttered, trying to contain herself back into a more serious mood. She looked at him, saw that he was indeed dead serious, and her humour dropped away. "You __are __serious… Well, what makes you think I could put you there, even if I __wanted __to?"

Umbra shrugged, trying to act as if he were at least slightly informed on what he was doing. "If I can't be on that team, I won't be analyzed. Simple as that."

The Pilot, despite wearing the helmet, looked like she wanted to unplug Umbra's power supply if only to shut him up. There was a long minute or so of silence as she started to tap and swipe away at her datapad, and Umbra used some of that time to see her rank and what unit she was in.

__Lieutenant Colonel, Warmonger Corps.__

__She's probably in charge of the Battalion that Bravo-Alpha is assigned in, which is why she's the first one to talk to me.__

_… ___And if anyone can get me on that Fireteam, she can.__

He sat back and pretended that he never started looking at her shoulder patches, when all of a sudden her head popped back up.

"Listen, I can't assign you to Fireteam Bravo-Alpha just yet. It __does __need a new Pilot, now that Braddock's dead, but you haven't been cleared for service… but I can't keep you contained forever either, that's not part of our code. You're free to roam the ship, __with __an armed escort. Any actions you take or things you say __will __reflect your intentions. I'll see what I can do with your request, and I'll let you know when I have an update."

The Colonel pressed another button on her wrist pad, and the sliding door behind her opened. Two Riflemen stepped in, heavily armed with body armor and modified taser rifles. By Umbra's guess, the rifles had enough punch behind them to short-circuit his body functions for at least a couple hours, rendering him useless in that time.

The Lieutenant Colonel spoke quickly and professionally to the Militia soldiers, pointing directly at Umbra as she did so.

"He has E-3 access, but keep him away from the escape pods and the bridge. If he tries anything funny, don't take any risks; just taser him enough to fry his circuits. And __don't __leave him alone for __any __reason, you got it?"

Both Riflemen nodded in acknowledgement, and the Colonel got up from her seat, patting one of them on the shoulder approvingly before leaving the interrogation room.

The two grunts exchanged glances with each other, and then switched the safeties off of their taser rifles, keeping the weapons at the ready in case Umbra tried anything.

__I sure hope these two realize I could easily snap both their necks if I wanted to.__

__Luckily for them, I'm not looking to do that anytime soon.__

Umbra raised a mechanical arm in the arm, spreading his hand out in a peaceful gesture.

"Just so we're clear, I'm not going to do anything, uh, violent, alright?"

The Riflemen more or less nodded, but they still jumped a hilarious space back when Umbra stood up, revealing his full height and build.

__First stop: Fireteam Bravo-Alpha.__

Even if Umbra wasn't a part of the squad yet, he still wanted to check up on them(particularly Jules) to see how they were dealing with the death of Sam.

The simulacrum stood up, walking to the sliding door, which was left unlocked now that the Lieutenant Colonel was done with him. He stopped right in between the two Riflemen, realizing rather suddenly that he had no idea where anything was on the ship.

"Uh…" Umbra started, rather awkwardly. "Where would the… Pilot Barracks be?"

He looked the left at one Rifleman, but it was the one on his right who answered immediately. "Subsection 2 or 3, depending on who you're looking for."

"Fireteam Bravo-Alpha. They're in the Warmonger Corps, but I don't know what Battalion they're assigned to. I know they're on this ship..."

He started out the door, looking both ways down a brightly lit, two-way hall that stretched on for about a hundred meters, with doors and secondary hallways appearing regularly down each end. He took a step in one direction, leaning one way to look at a sign above one hall junction, but then the Riflemen gave him a answer again.

"There's only on Bravo-Alpha left in the entire Battalion on this ship, and I know where they are."

"Oh?" Umbra said, turning to the young man in curiosity. "What happened to the others?"

The grunt shrugged, letting the grip on his taser rifle loosen temporarily. "Either dead or deserted. Sometimes both. I saw them about a half ago in Cargo Bay 4. I can lead you there."

Umbra hesitated for a heartbeat, then nodded, stepping out of the way to allow room for the Rifleman to pass by and take the lead. The three of them navigated the main hallway, past a row of other holding rooms and by numerous other intersecting hallways and entrances until they came to a wide, open-terminal lift with a shutter. They entered the lift and went down to second floor from the bottom of the ship, by Umbra's observation, and they entered straight into a row of 4 interconnected Cargo Bays. The bay doors were open, and a steady flow of traffic was coming in and out of the ship through the pressurized translucent shields, but that wasn't what caught Umbra's attention. It was the people that consumed him.

Flocks of Riflemen and Bay workers were swarming all over the place, often in packs, with the occasional small group of Pilots. Even with the hyper-attentiveness of a simulacrum, it was impossible to count the massive number of people that he continued to pass by as he made his way across the Cargo Bays with his escort.

He reached Bay 2, and stopped in one of the emptier corners to try to fully take in the moment.

A couple Titans were helping a group of workers to load ammunition crates onto several Crow supply ships, which were waiting directly in transit to take off for Angel City. A Pilot was directing a young engineer on how to correctly repair a Titan's optic mount. A mixed Platoon of 15 or so Riflemen and Pilots were all standing on a metal walkway that ran up against the back of the Bay, leaning on the railing and watching the action down below. Squads and Platoons converged together in huge groups to do a member count after a recent battle before heading to the Barracks for debriefing.

There was no doubt that it was a beautiful sight.

__Whatever the IMC calls the Militia - Savage, unorganized, rebel scum…__

__Seeing this level of organization and passion more or less defeats their argument, in it's own way.__

The two men escorting Umbra were starting to get restless, watching him stand there, so he continued along the Cargo deck, doing his best to stay out of the busier parts of the massive space.

"Hey! You're standing in front of the taxi lights!"

It took a second for Umbra to realize that someone was yelling at him, and he stepped to one side, realizing that his titanium body was blocking several bright yellow lights, which were supposed to be some sort of taxi guide for a Crow that was parking.

One of the Riflemen following him around chuckled in amusement. "You'll get used to it, assuming you spend enough time down here."

__Sure.__

He passed through the Bays quickly from then on, ignoring the occasional funny stare he received from people who paid enough attention to him. Once he'd reached Cargo Bay 4, he climbed the stairs up onto the overlooking railing, where he looked over the waist-length railing and tried to scout out the area for Jules and her Fireteam.

Bay 4 was the last bay in the long open stretch, ending abruptly with a flat wall on one side. Umbra observed the large amount of Pilots who were in that area, and he scanned the many groups until he finally saw the distinct simulacrum shape of Jules, standing in a three-person circle with Tacks and Pedro.

For some reason, a sort of subconscious pressure was relieved off of Umbra, although he didn't recall that pressure ever being there before.

Umbra went back down the stairs and cut straight across the deck towards Fireteam Bravo-Alpha. He ended up angering a traffic control officer by cutting off a moving Titan in the middle of the Bay, but that hardly mattered to him at that point.

Tacks was the first one to see him, when he was about 10 meters away, and the Cloak Pilot collected the attention of Pedro and Jules, pointing to Umbra quietly.

"So Colonel Lasky __didn't __cut you into tiny pieces!" Pedro shouted, ambling over to meet Umbra mid-way. "I'm surprised! Did she tell these kids to babysit you or something?"

He was pointing to the two Riflemen assigned to Umbra, and the simulacrum nodded.

"They're not so bad. They don't taser me, and they helped me find you guys."

Tacks joined Pedro by his side, raising a hand in a silent, semi-respectful hello.

The two pilots more or less confused Umbra. One of them was quiet as anything, maybe a little stoic, and the other gave the impression of a loud-mouthed nut job who was there for the kicks. And yet, they both held the stature of two friends who got along better than ever.

__You don't pick your friends in war.__

__If I had to guess, these guys have bonded more from being on the battlefield together than because of their personalities.__

Umbra switched his attention over to Jules, who had sat herself on top of an empty supply crate and was counting the ammunition in her magazines. It was impossible to tell for certain when looking at a simulacrum, but Umbra could almost see the sadness present in her robotic arms and legs as she tried to distract herself with her ammo checking.

He focused on the background conversation of Tacks and Pedro as he stood there considering how to confront Jules.

"You know, before the IMC busted into our homes on the Frontier, I had a complete collection of the Beddosh Cards."

"You're shitting me."

"I ain't lying, Tacks! It was all mint condition too, before a Paladin tank flattened my entire freaking house."

"Damn… I would've been lucky just to get a cheap __knock-off__ version of one of those on Gridiron."

__Beddosh Cards…__

It was some sort of game, or collector's items. It sounded oddly familiar to Umbra, but like many things, he couldn't recall __what __made it familiar. Whatever it was, it sounded like a rather childish hobby for a couple adults, yet it was entertaining to listen to the two of them.

__Focus on what's important, Umbra. __He place his attention back on Jules, who by then was finished her ammo count and was simply sitting there, her body unmoving and her attention consumed by something else completely. __How am I gonna confront this?__

Slowly, calmly, he approached her, stopping beside the crate and pulling himself up to sit beside her a respectful distance away. He noted that his armed escort had enough sense to stay a decent distance away from him.

If Jules even knew he was there, she didn't acknowledge it; she failed to make any visual contact with him, and her posture didn't change in the least.

It was as if she were dead, or incomplete, and Umbra could understand __why __she would feel that way.

"Jules," he muttered, trying to pick through words in his data banks carefully, "you doing alright?"

A few seconds passed, and finally, she nodded, not bothering to utter a word back in response. Clearly, she was __not __alright, but Umbra didn't feel like pushing her to open up; especially since he hardly knew her.

Still, he found himself continuing to talk, despite how unwise he knew it was. "You just lost your brother Jules, you don't need to-"

"Are you __done__?"

She was staring right at him then, wither perhaps the coldest gaze that an optic could give. With a bit of hesitancy, Umbra nodded, and he watched her get up and storm off with all her equipment.

Umbra sighed, sliding off the crate and holding his head in minor stress. __Stupid. Why did you push it?__

Tacks came up beside Umbra, grabbing him by the black metal shoulder. It wasn't necessarily a hostile action, but there was enough force behind it that Umbra could tell Tacks was being sternly serious when he spoke.

"That __really __wasn't the time to be trying something like that, okay? She's still in shock, you would be too if the only family you had left had just died."

Umbra nodded in acknowledgement. "I know. For some reason I tried anyway."

"Hey, I get it." Tacks said, to Umbra's surprise. "You want to help. Just wait for the right time before talking about it again."

He let go of Umbra's shoulder, and the simulacrum nodded in agreement. As if to lighten the mood, Pedro distracted both of them with a quick jump into the conversation.

"I don't wanna break the __weird __one-way convo you guys are having, but we seriously need to get Umbra acquainted with the carrier space." The short Pilot had one of the taser rifles that Umbra's escort grunts were carrying, and when Umbra looked around, he noticed that one of the Riflemen had disappeared into the mass of people out on the Cargo Bay.

"I relieved the cute little grunt of his duties for a while," Pedro grunted, checking the safety on the taser rifle before pointing it at Umbra in mock alertness, "I told him we'd watch you while we give you a tour."

Tacks took the rifle from the the other grunt escort, effectively relieving him of his duties for the time being, and the two pilots came up on either side of Umbra. Pedro pointed to the stairs that led up to the exit door.

"Let's go see the Barracks first, shall we? I don't think I need to warn you about his, but if there __is __the small chance that you try something funny, I'll tase your robot balls right out from between your legs!"

"Knock it off, Pedro."

"Yeah yeah, __whatever__."

The "escorted" tour, despite spanning across the entire MCS Rutledge from bow to stern, was surprisingly short in Umbra's mind; although he suspected that was because they avoided a number of places, such as the Sensitive Detainee Brig, the Research Bay, and the Bridge. Instead of visiting those areas, Tacks and Pedro brought Umbra through the entire general layout, starting with all the Barracks, and moving on to placing such as the Medical Bay, Armory, Communications Room, Officer's Quarters, Engineering Bay, and the Cafeteria. Pedro stopped repeatedly to nick pieces of food from Riflemen's lunch plates, despite being repeated yelled at by Tacks.

It was when they reached the Titan Bay that Colonel Lasky appeared out of nowhere and stopped the group, right as they were about to head down into the base level to visit Sierra.

"Specialist Tacks." she growled, placing her hands on her hips as she stood in front of the three Pilots. "Was this __your __idea, waving off the guard I assigned to him?"

Tacks paused for only a second, raising his hand in a thoughtful gesture as he was preparing to respond. Pedro cut in before he could get a word in edgewise though. "Uh, yeah, totally. All his idea. I tried to tell him it was wrong, but you know how the man can be…"

Colonel Lasky stood there, unmoving. "Thanks for the confession, Pedro. You're so honest."

"Just glad I could help." the Militia Pilot responded smugly, falling in behind Tacks and Umbra a little nervously. The Colonel switched her attention to Umbra.

"Good news for you, Umbra. I just spoke to command up on the Bridge…"

Umbra listened intently, eager to hear a response, and surprisingly, he wasn't the only one; both Tacks and Pedro had their attention set on what she was about to say.

"You've been granted a position in Fireteam Bravo-Alpha. The request will be pushed through the ranks officially in about a day or two, but I see no point in holding the news back from you in the meantime."

Umbra, despite not having the ability to breath, still mimicked the sound and movement of releasing a heavy sigh. Tacks started to pat Umbra on the back of his titanium shoulders, and Pedro began to make his way to the ship elevators to find Jules and tell her the news.

Colonel Lasky nodded quickly at the simulacrum before following Pedro. "Welcome to the Warmonger Corps, 5th Battalion, Umbra."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Five:**

****Audio Log 4 - Umbra****

__So here's my new official designation, assigned to me by command.__

_"___Specialist [No Surname], Umbra, Pilot. Assigned to Fireteam Bravo-Alpha of the 26____th____Platoon attached to the Warmonger Corps, 5____th____Battalion."__

__But that's a mouthful, so I won't ever bother repeating that, even to myself. Right now, the only important thing to me is my Fireteam, which is honestly is pretty much the only thing in my life. I just don't have anything else at the moment.__

__That's a bit of a sad idea to most people, but really, it just confuses me more than anything. I keep asking myself about my identity, about who I was before I woke up as a simulacrum, and why I take such an interest in people who I hardly know.__

__Well, with luck, I'll find out who I am today. Alongside the field tests that the Militia want me to take in the Research Bay, they're also going to do a quick scan of my databanks to see if they can identify me in any way. I'll admit, if my on-board systems didn't find any personal data, they probably won't either, but it's worth a try anyways.__

****End Log****

Another round hit it's mark perfectly. A ripped hole was present where Umbra had fired his D-101 DMR at.

The AI controlling the Firing Range started it's flat dialogue over the loudspeaker, but Umbra only listened to about half of it.

_"___Marksmen test: Completed. Please remove any excess ammunition from your weapon and safely step out of the designated Firing Range. Remember to carry your weapon with the safety on, and to hold it with the exit barrel pointing away from all living and non-living subjects."__

Umbra pulled back on the cocking handle and let the half-full clip fall into his mechanical hands. Subconsciously, he shivered at the fact that it all felt naturally practised to him somehow, despite the fact that he couldn't remember __ever __going to target practice before.

He put the DMR and the clip up on a rack against the wall of the Firing Range before walking through a sliding door, into a temporary observation room that Colonel Lasky and a number of technicians had set up to observe his performances.

Lasky was leaning against the far wall of the room, her arms crossed over her chest, and she nodded to him as he entered. The nod held a new level of respect behind it; not the kind that came from knowledge of that person, but more from their abilities. Umbra nodded back, and the Colonel immediately started talking about his performance, combing over every general detail.

"Not bad overall, Umbra. You were a bit off on the climbing course, but I suspect that was because you're too heavy for that jumpkit - we'll have that fixed. Other than that though, you're a model Pilot. 96% efficiency on your hand-to-hand combat, 87% on your marksman test, and your link with SC-0046 is almost perfect I'd say, which is unusual for a Titan that still needs it's last neural link wiped."

The Colonel nodded to a technician who was waiting patiently beside her. It was a short, stout man, a little young, and he moved a little closer to Umbra at Lasky's signal.

Umbra moved a hand forward to keep the technician from touching him, but the person stopped before he even came within 3 meters. The man looked down at a datapad he had, and began reading off a list of statistics related to Umbra to everyone in the room.

"We found a lot of info on Umbra during our data analysis in the lab. First, he has a body weight of over 676 pounds due to the majority of his outer plating being made out of a reinforced titanium alloy. The alloy is unknown to us, and is capable of deflecting even high-caliber rounds in some cases. There are no __obvious __weak points on his body, except for the open sections around his neck, abdomen region, and joints. There is also a small space in his back that allows an attacker to damage his main battery, which is an 8000 volt lithium pack. He has an emergency 50 volt pack in his headpiece, but it wouldn't take him far.

"We also had to a hard plug-in with a router cable into his systems, since connecting to his OS wirelessly was nearly impossible thanks to military-grade software protection, WR-6 class."

The group of technicians started to mutter and make remarks about the man's last comment, about Umbra's software security. The man wasn't finished, and he hushed everyone until they were quiet so he could continue.

"He has two plasma blades, a 12-inch one that comes from his left wrist, and a 26-inch blade that is activated out of his right wrist. Both are activated by customized muscle movement and finger positioning, and they take a charge of roughly a 1000 volts each to power them for about 10 seconds. It's a big charge, but it seems like Vinson Dynamics has an answer to that as well; they installed kinetic energy chargers on all of Umbra's moving joints and limbs, and he has both thermal and radial heat charging. All he has to do is spend a couple hours out in the sun to fully recharge again, and if that doesn't work he can either go into low power mode, or he can shut himself down for a while to recharge at a power source.

He has radio and all the bells and whistles of technology built into his OS system."

The man stopped, seemingly to take a deep breath. However, he didn't seem quite finished yet, and even as all the other technicians started to go back to work on their gadgets and screens, he simply stood there next to Colonel Lasky, fiddling with his datapad nervously.

The Colonel seemed to notice his hesitancy to sit as well, because she gave the technician a light kick in the back of the heel to grab his attention. "You got something else you wanna say kid?"

The young man jumped a little, and he cleared his throat before responding to her. He kept his voice lowered enough so that no one else in the room could hear him, but Umbra still managed to catch every word loud and clear.

"Uh, there is __one __more thing ma'am. I was running a system check on the Mark II's base code, and I found… What looks like the script commands for a trojan control virus."

"A trojan control virus?" Lasky repeated, silently asking for elaboration. Umbra discreetly stepped forward to listen more closely, which was difficult considering that he weighed more than 3 average humans and his titanium feet thumped against the floor loudly.

"Yes ma'am. Some of us checked the code. It's designed to manipulate any system into thinking that it is a safe code. The security lets the code into the system because it __thinks __it's something else, and once that trojan virus is inside, it's capable of a full-scale functional takeover.

"Ma'am, we're talking about a tech __nightmare __inside Umbra's systems. If he wanted to, he could access an enemy Titan's data core and manipulate it into killing it's own __Pilot__. And that's just one example of many."

Lasky nodded at the technician's words. "Thank you Corporal. You're dismissed." She waved off the technician, and he scurried away rather nervously, holding his datapad as if it were some shield. The Colonel pointed at Umbra, as if silently accusing him of hiding the information, and he shrugged his metal shoulders back at her.

"Hey, I didn't know. I just woke up in this body one time."

Lasky snorted in irritation through her helmet, and she crossed her arms again, this time in a thoughtfully annoyed, yet curious way. She shook her head after standing there and thinking to herself silently, pulling herself out of her own mind and looking back at Umbra.

"Well," she said, sighing in resignation, "I spoke to one of the tech nerds earlier. They can't access anything in your databanks, they can only view the __base __info. That means that unless we can take apart that mechanical brain of yours - which would effectively kill you - we won't ever get to use that "trojan virus" that you got sitting inside of you.

"We agreed not to harm you, and I'll stick to that promise. I'll let you go and serve with your Fireteam, but keep in mind that I'm stretching my neck out by trusting you. __Don't __prove me wrong, you hear me? Don't do anything stupid, __especially __with that virus code. I don't think __anyone __fully understands it yet."

Umbra nodded comprehensively. He was about to leave the room when he remembered one of the main reasons he'd come there. __Ask her about personal data. See if they recovered anything.__

"Did you recover anything about me personally, Colonel?" He tried to sound flat and curt, but he couldn't hide the hopeful taint in his simulacrum voice. Lasky shook her head briefly, and she expressed her empathetic understanding through a solemn voice. "Nothing that would answer who you were as a person. Just some scrambled data really."

Umbra nodded in response, then saluted and turned to leave the room, trying his best to hide his disappointment at the lack of information regarding himself. The Colonel called him back, and he stopped between the doorway with the sliding door open, listening closely.

"We did see __something __on the personal data scripts. You're recorded as being a Chief Warrant Officer, 2nd Class. Probably IMC, or some militant mercenary branch of Vinson Dynamics."

__Well, that answers something at least. It's not much, but it tells me that I must've done well for myself… I think.__

Colonel Lasky continued, and what she had to say after that took him by surprise.

"I've decided to up your promotion to Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Class because of this new information. But because you're still a new Pilot in the Warmonger Corps, you will not be Fireteam leader. That probably won't happen for a while in your position."

Umbra was motionless, perhaps even without words for a split second.

A few heartbeats passed, and then he just nodded at her again, a bit more respectfully than last time. "Thank you Colonel."

He left the room, navigating the many quarters and sections of the MS Rutledge until he came to the Engineering Bay, where he had his IMC and Vinson Dynamics' shoulder emblems removed. The engineer who worked on him set his laser remover down when he was finished, and right as Umbra was about to leave, he sat the simulacrum back down and pulled out a set of laser coating materials. "Woah man, you aren't going anywhere without getting a new paint job, are ya? That standard black is looking kinda bland, don't you think?"

Umbra realized that the guy was right; his entirely black body __was __rather flat, if not unattractive, and he also remembered that it was good to have the emblem of his Battalion and the Warmonger Corps painted on him.

"Uh, alright then." Umbra began, raising a metal hand to his solid triangle head and holding it as he thought. "… Give me the Warmonger Corps emblem on the right shoulder, and the 5th Battalion on the left. And throw some gray and blue stripes on me, just anywhere."

The engineer did as instructed, working with the speed of an expert and the skill of an artist. With laser tools, he was done within 20 minutes, and Umbra headed straight down to the Armory from there to pick up his requested DMR and B3 Wingman, which the Master Sergeant managing the Armory had reserved for him earlier that day.

Umbra was making his way back to the Pilot Barracks to tell the Fireteam everything that had happened, when he passed the main entry into the Titan Bay.

He remembered trying to visit Sierra earlier on, before Colonel Lasky pulled him into the Research Bay for his testings.

__I should see how Sierra is doing.__

__She might just be a Titan, but she's mine. And after losing a Pilot, I need to make sure she'll be fit enough for service.__

He walked quickly into the Titan Bay, heading straight down the stairwell into the base level, where all the off-duty Titans were housed and and were free to roam about or go into sleep mode between being serviced and repaired.

He moved to one side to allow an Ion Titan to pass, looking around the wide, full space in the meantime. In a single row of Titan racks and roaming space, he counted at least 20 Titans or so, and when he looked back at the main hall, he saw another 5 rows to explore.

__Great.__

__This will take a while.__

There was the heavy thumping of a Titan approaching behind Umbra, and he moved himself to the side again to let whoever it was pass. The Titan stopped beside him, and he looked up, realizing with pleasant surprise that it was Sierra. __Well, that solves that.__

The Monarch-class Titan was still a little banged up in the chassis from her recent combat, but since none of it was damaging of her functions, she didn't seem to mind.

After looking both ways to make sure she wouldn't block any Titan's path, Sierra leaned to one side and, carefully, she sat down alongside Umbra, her single optic piece closing a bit to focus on him in more detail.

Her form as a Titan meant that sitting down was a little awkward for her, and she had to shift herself about quite a bit to make it tolerable enough. Once she had found the perfect spot, however, Umbra would've dared to say that it looked almost cute, in an unusual sort of way.

_"___Cute" really isn't the right word to be using in any context involving a Titan… but I can't really think of anything better.__

There was a long minute or so of silence where the two robotic partners - Pilot and Titan - simply exchanged several glances of acknowledged existences. Under normal circumstances, Umbra would have found it weird, or out of place, but right then, it simply felt… Almost __comforting, __somehow, or perhaps generally casual.

It just felt right for the moment, which was why he felt almost guilty when he finally broke the silence to talk to her.

"You doing alright, Sierra? After losing Sam?"

The Titan blinked her bright blue optic a couple times, as though she were processing the question, and then thinking about it. She eventually raised a giant hand in the air, set it even, and waved it back and forth slowly. Umbra recognized it as a way of saying "more or less," and he nodded understandingly.

Another moment went by with each ticking of the seconds in it, and then Umbra felt his wrist pad vibrate, telling him he'd received a message.

He looked down, reading that Sierra had just sent him a worded message through the coded Pilot-Titan message channel. He opened the message and read it slowly, turning it over in his brain.

_"___I feel like I have failed protocol 3. Sam is dead. But my new Pilot is alive still, so I feel hope as well."__

Umbra looked over the message one more time, nodding as he read the last sentence the last time around. "I get that. But you don't have to feel bad about Sam. We both knew the odds of him pulling through an injury like that. Taking shrapnel from loose fire - Sierra, it would have been nearly impossible to avoid a freak incident like that. Even if it didn't happen __then, __something like that could've happened some other day. It's just war."

He couldn't tell if his words actually helped or not, but he more or less thought so, since she was now eyeing him with intense curiosity and thoughtfulness. There was a level of emotion in her optic that took Umbra by surprise, and he stared back at her for a long time. It was a complicated sort of stare, one that took a lot of trust for both of the starers to continue doing. If Umbra could have smiled then, he would have.

Sierra made a series of metallic whirring sounds, and then she raised a hand, waved goodbye, and stood up on her Titan legs. Umbra waved back at her and watched her return to her rack, where she closed her optic and went into sleep mode.

__So… What the hell happened?__

The visit was weird, sure, but somehow it was rather enjoyable. Like two friends coming together, simply to enjoy each others company.

__Weird, is what it is.__

Umbra shrugged, marking it off as a unique part of the Pilot-Titan relationship, and he left the Titan Bay to finally regroup with Fireteam Bravo-Alpha.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Six:**

****Audio Log 5 - Umbra****

__I guess this is me then.__

__Chief Warrant Officer 2____nd____Class, Umbra.__

__Of course, most people in my Platoon just call me "Sparky" or something else derogatory. I don't mind the name calling or anything, but it's when people say it out of disrespect, or to provoke me, is when it bugs me.__

__I may be ex-IMC, but I have no memory of that past. It would be different if I defected or something, but hell, I don't even remember who I am.__

__That doesn't matter all that much, though. My Fireteam respects me, mostly, which is what matters to me the most. I say "mostly" because I still can't seem to get along with Jules.__

__I guess I just don't know how to approach her properly without hitting a nerve with her somehow. Pedro says I should just stop trying, and Tacks tells me that she'll come around on her own eventually, but I don't know… I just wish I could do more. She won't even let me say hello most of the time; it's just strictly professional talk between us, and even then she's ice cold.__

__So that's something to worry about. But not today, because today the entire Platoon is scheduled to stage a distraction so a Marauder Corps unit can raid one of the IMC resupply outposts in Angel City, District 12. If I remember correctly, that was near where I woke up… If I have an opportunity, I'm going to try to look for the place I had activated originally. I was too confused and alarmed to look for it then, but maybe there are some answers to my past there, if it isn't completely buried under the rubble.__

****End Log****

"Alright people! This is the deal!"

The Platoon leader, Lieutenant Bordon, stepped out onto the Titan Bay to address his Pilots. Umbra's Fireteam, including himself, all waited silently for Jules to finish loading her weapon before turning their collective attention to the holographic map that the Lieutenant was flashing in front of everyone.

"We've been put on support duty again, kiddos! There's a lot of raiding that needs to be done in Angel City to meet our supply quota, and we're gonna be the ones to take the heat while the Marauders move in and grab what they can!"

In the background, Umbra could briefly hear Corporal Mannard from Fireteam Bravo-Charlie muttering something about how the Marauder Corps hogged all the glory. Bordon let the Fireteams chatter for a bit before silencing them with a wave of his hand.

"We're going in hard and fast, Platoon! We're gonna be behind enemy lines, in District 12, but only for a while! We just keep the IMC distracted long enough for those Marauder shiny-boots to steal enough fuel for next month, and then we get the hell out of there!

"Mannard, your team takes the west side of the District, make sure none of those Paladins flank us! Baker, you're with me in the assault group, carry extra ammo! Jules, your Fireteam is pulling surveillance, take down those drones and keep out any IMC dropships!"

Umbra quick-checked his DMR, sliding the cocking handled back and forth several times to eliminate jamming, and dialing up the scope for optimum use. He slung it over his shoulder, checked to see that his Wingman was loaded, and then he turned and made his way to Sierra, who was sitting in one of the far ejection stations, hatch open and ready to receive her Pilot. Umbra climbed one of the walls to get to her instead of using the far away ladder that was at the end of the row, and he landed inside the cockpit with a thump, turning about skillfully and leaning back into his chair. The hatch closed on him, and the ocular systems came on in a matter of seconds.

Pilots were still making their way to their Titans around then, but Jules started a communications check with the Fireteam anyways, hailing them loudly over the team channel.

"This is Jules, beginning comm check 1. Everyone read?"

Umbra responded first, followed by the others. "Umbra checking in."

"Tacks checking in."

"Pedro busting in, kiddos!"

The Pilot was talking so loud that the comms rang with the aftermath of his voice, and the entire team could hear Tacks cursing mildly before yelling at Pedro.

"Dude, go to hell! No one likes it when you scream into the damn radio!"

"Oh yeah? Maybe I'll try singing next time Tacks."

Jules butted in, but only briefly. "Lock it down, both of you. We need to focus on the mission."

"Yeah, mission." Tacks mumbled grouchily. "More like a __deathtrap__."

"Isn't that what makes it fun?" Pedro laughed. He sounded freakishly intense through the comm channel, and Umbra was almost tempted to cut him off completely.

The team channel was overridden by the Platoon link, in which Lieutenant Bordon addressed the 20 or so Pilots under his command.

"Weapons free, Platoon. Show no mercy. Remember the Warmonger's motto: "Provoke, Attack, Survive." And if all else fails, it's a __hell __of a way to go out."

The AI monitoring the Titan Bay began it's countdown over the PA system, starting from 10 and working down to one slowly. At 5 seconds, the floor underneath each ejection station kicked open, revealing the deep, bright atmosphere of Angel City, about 100 kilometers beneath Sierra's crushingly large feet.

Time seemed to slow, and as the last couple seconds were being counted away, Umbra closed his single optic shut. He tried to imagine a clam, steady heartbeat alongside a strict breathing pattern, which seemed natural to him at that time even if it wasn't physically possible for him as a simulacrum.

_"___Ejection Sequence: Initiated."__

The AI's voice was the last thing that Umbra clearly heard for a long time after that. The restraints holding each Militia Titan up were released, and through a blurred mess of vertigo and fast action, Umbra watched as he barreled through the sky alongside his Platoon, hurtling towards Angel City at speeds he didn't even know were possible.

The wind, despite being on the other side of Sierra's thick chassis, was still deafeningly loud. Umbra wanted to moved to cover his ears, but he was so far sunk in his seat cushions that he felt almost paralyzed. Through the mess of speed and unstable vision, Umbra watched the first set of tall city skyscrapers come into view in the bottom of his peripherals. The shapes grew, and they slowed down significantly as they came within 1,000 meters from contact with the ground. Faintly, Umbra could see the rest of his Fireteam falling close by, their Titans deploying landing flaps to slow down as well.

500 meters. Sierra had slowed down enough for Umbra to both see and think straight, and he saw the road he was about to land on. A kilometer or so ahead of his drop point, about a third of the Platoon was landing in the middle of a battle group of IMC tanks and soldiers.

Sierra bashed into the concrete street with such force that it sent a shock wave of rubble and broken road flying into the surrounding buildings, cracking and destroying the walls further. Pedro's Scorch Titan landed with a shattering thud atop a wide building, and he fell right through the 4-story building, completely obliterating the structure and causing nearly half the place to collapse around him. Jules' Ronin and Tacks' Ion both landed successfully into a side street that connected onto the main road that Umbra had landed on.

"Alright team," Jules said through their radio quickly, "you heard the Lieutenant; let's get our asses moving to the skyscrapers and pull surveillance. Tacks, Pedro, you take the streets. Umbra and me will paint the targets from the building tops, and you'll destroy them."

"Ah, come on Jules!" Pedro groaned. "I'm in a freaking Scorch, for God's sake! I can't do ranged destruction for __shit__!"

Nobody responded, and Pedro seemed to get over it, since his Titan was hauling itself out of the building it had crashed into, and was making it's way towards Tack's location.

The area was surprisingly quite, considering that they'd just dropped in behind enemy lines, in the middle of a war zone. If Umbra had to guess, it was probably because the rest of the Platoon were doing their jobs, and keeping the IMC forces at bay along the far sides of the District.

Sierra started down the road, keeping at a slow pace so that he'd eventually meet up with Jules. The other simulacrum eventually caught up with him, and they set a brisk pace with their Titans, splitting apart slightly from Tacks and Pedro as they came up alongside a row of thin, tall rising skyscrapers that made the surrounding houses and buildings look tiny in comparison.

"You pick a building." Jules muttered through the radio. Umbra stopped in the middle of a destroyed intersection that was missing half it's pavement, and he assessed each structure for both it's height and usability.

His eyes came across one skyscraper that had the large imprinting logo of Vinson Dynamics plastered on it's large tinted windows.

__That's it.__

__If I want answers about myself from any place, I'd probably get it from there.__

He looked over the building. It was wide enough that, even if damaged, it was probably still had enough integrity for them to move through it, and he measured the top few floors to be about 80 or so meters high, which was well sufficient enough for surveillance.

Umbra pointed to the building with one of Sierra's large hands. "This one. It's sturdy, tall enough, and…"

He wanted to admit the other reason for his interest in the building, but he didn't dare.

__I don't want it to seem like I'm distracted from the mission.__

It seemed that it was easy enough for his Fireteam to guess anyways, because he found Jules finishing his sentence for him.

"... and you're likely to find personal data there on yourself?" she murmured. Umbra wasn't sure, but he was pretty certain she sounded less hostile than usual, and more curious instead.

"Yeah, I guess."

She didn't say anything in response, but rather, she disembarked her Titan and started towards the skyscraper, scanning the area with her weapon to check for movement. Umbra joined her at her side a few seconds later, and they both entered the building together.

They found the elevator shaft after several seconds of searching through the run-down lobby. The elevator door was jammed open, and the elevator itself was stuck in the underground floor; although it wasn't like they would have used it in the condition it was in anyways. Jules took the lead on their jumpkit ascension to the rooftop, using the narrow walls of the elevator shaft to jump back and forth and letting the momentum push them up.

By Umbra's count, it took them about 2 minutes, and both Tacks and Pedro were in position to start taking targets on their call.

The sun shone strongly through the thick smoke and cloud that hung above the two simulacrums. Jules chose a spot along the corner rampart of the roof. It was open enough to allow for freedom of movement, but the railings there also provided cover and made a decent sniper perch. Since Umbra was the only one with a DMR, he ended up being the main sniper, while Jules took on the role of spotter and caller.

Tacks' voice sounded over the team comm, and he sounded slightly restless. "How're we looking up there, guys?"

Jules didn't respond immediately, so Umbra took over on the response, trying his best to be short, yet professional.

"We found a decent perch. Skies are clear so far, but I doubt it'll stay that way."

Umbra propped his rifle against the top of the railing and crouched low so only his metal head popped over the cover. Jules came up beside him and did the same, scouting out the entire District with her binoculars.

There was a long time where everything was silent, exempting the whistling of the wind from the fact that they were 30 or so stories up from the ground. Umbra felt the urge to break the quiet, but he didn't dare set Jules off when they were in the middle of a mission.

__Just say something anyways. Start off with a casual comment or something.__

Before he could speak, Jules set her binoculars aside and pointed northeast of the perch, into the sky. Several small dots could be seen on the horizon, rapidly growing as the objects came closer.

"IMC reinforcements. 2 Goblin dropships and a Widow; Pedro, Tacks, mark your targets. We have the dropship on the left."

Umbra watched Pedro and Tacks navigate their Titans through the District, trying to get clear shots at the Widow and one of the Goblins as they came closer still. Jules turned to Umbra, right as he was beginning to mark the trajectory and the distance to the dropship that they had marked. "Can you take a shot like that?" She asked. Form Umbra's point of view, she seemed anxious to hear a "yes," as if she never actually knew if he could do it.

Umbra huffed in slight laughter. He didn't take his optic off his scope, but he did respond to her after a moment of silence.

"Are you asking if I can hit a single pilot driving a dropship at over 200 kilometers through a small tinted window…?" He paused in the middle of his answer, and then decided not to let Jules wait any longer. "Yes, I can. I actually bothered to load armor-piercing rounds, so the strengthened glass shouldn't be a problem."

He finally looked over at the female simulacrum, and he saw that she had her head tilted back in… __Silent laughter?__

If she was in fact amused, she was doing a good job of hiding it - and the fact that she had a mechanical wedge for a head didn't exactly help either. Umbra shrugged his shoulders, mainly at himself, then went back to scoping out the incoming convoy of IMC ships.

__Focus. Count in groups of 4, fire between the seconds. Don't flinch.__

The dropship they'd marked was well within 2 kilometers from their position by then, and about level with them in height. Jules pulled out her binoculars again and started assisting him in the rangefinding.

"Call the distance." Umbra muttered.

Jules responded hastily, readjusting the focus on her binoculars. "Fire at 800 meters. Gives you about 20 seconds."

They swapped a question with an answer in rapid succession, like experts who had done that very same thing for many years.

"Wind?"

"... 10 by 12, left to right. Gusts are 22."

"Humidity?"

"2%. Don't even put it in your calculations, it won't make a difference."

"Target trajectory?"

"Heading southwest at 150 kilometers with a descent of 5 meters per second. You have a 1 meter hit box."

"Alright Jules. Wish me luck."

He half expected her not to say anything, but to his abrupt surprise, she actually said something back to him that wasn't hostile or cold. "Yeah. You'll need it for a shot like that."

The IMC ship was about 1200 meters away, and closing fast despite the fact that it was slowing down for landing. Umbra narrowed his optic to a sharp point, and looked right through the scope on his DMR.

The world around him clicked, and then swept itself away. Suddenly, there was only Umbra's cross hairs and the pilot sitting inside the cockpit of the enemy dropship. He felt himself breathing, although he knew that was simply a trick of the mind, since he couldn't physically do that.

900 meters. Umbra tried his best to match his aim ticks similar to something like a beating heart, in the hopes of making his aim more steady.

850 meters. Umbra closed his optic even further, which he hoped would help him focus on his tiny target better. The world slowed down to a single second. A second that lasted an eternity.

Umbra pulled the trigger.

The bottom of his cross hairs exploded in a short burst of flame as his bullet travelled from the rifle barrel and flew at over 3000 meters per second, right at the cockpit of the Goblin.

The tinted window cracked, and blood splattered all across the shattered glass. From the way the dropship spun out of control and crashed into a neighboring building, Umbra could only assume he'd hit __and __killed his target.

The building was left a smoldering, burning wreck, half destroyed by a wide rip in the side of it that the dropship had made upon it's crash landing. Umbra watched the scene unfold, and he sighed with satisfaction as the entire thing exploded in a second, larger ball of flame, which would have certainly killed any IMC survivors.

He turned to Jules, nodding to her slightly. She nodded back, which was probably the first notion of respect she'd ever given him. "Good shot." She murmured. She turned her attention to the commotion that was happening down below them, and Umbra stood up to look over the edge of the building as well.

The Widow dropship had been taken down by Pedro and Tacks before it could even deploy any Titans, but the Goblin had managed to deploy a squad of grunts with anti-Tian weapons before being shot down as well.

Pedro's Scorch Titan was busy setting the building on fire, in the hopes of flushing an IMC squad out into the open, and Tacks was retreating into an alley to avoid incoming rocket fire.

Jules spoke on the Fireteam channel, her voice showing obvious concern. "Status report: How're you guys holding up down there?"

Pedro responded hazily first, with Tacks following close behind.

"We're all good here Jules! Just busy - you know - burning some people alive right now!"

"My Titan is a little banged up, Jules. But I'll pull through, just need to get around all this anti-Titan ordinance."

Umbra and Jules had left their Titans on guard mode, on the other side of the building. Umbra hailed Sierra on the radio quickly while he was in the middle of reloading his DMR.

"Sierra, switch to auto-pilot, go and help the rest of the team. I need to go do something, but I'll be quick."

__I have to see what Vinson Dynamics has on my past.__

Now that he had the opportunity to find out, Umbra realized just how desperate he was to find information on who he was. He stood up and slung his rifle over his metal shoulder, but before he could start towards the elevator shaft, Jules stopped him with an outstretched arm.

"We're a team, Umbra. We don't go off on personal missions whenever we want."

"I'll be quick." He said hastily, walking around her arm. She didn't go after him, but he could feel her hard gaze following him all the way to the elevator shaft.

Umbra went through floor after floor, trying his best to stick to his word and finish the task quickly. He stopped at the 20th floor, which was marked as the record room, and he used his data knife to hack into the only working computer that was there.

Hungry for information, Umbra clumsily started typing on the keyboard, and found that he was quite capable of breaking the keys.

He took a moment to relax, and then he slowly, carefully pulled up a massive list of files.

He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was there, and then he did a file search, using keywords such as "Mark II Simulacrum," or "Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Class."

Two files appeared at the end of the search; one was titled "Mk. II Sim: Subject SPSU-001," and the other was called "Project Denathor." They popped up on the screen, but both were locked by the system, due to them being marked as "Top Secret."

Umbra stared at the screen for about 5 or so seconds. He made a loud whirring sound, which he thought to be some sort of weird sigh, and then, out of a sudden burst of anger, he punched a messy hole straight through the computer monitor, smashing the screen to bits and sending sparks flying.

He withdrew his metal arm, and stepped away from the wrecked station. He turned around, but froze mid-step when he saw Jules standing in the elevator doorway, her hand holding her back from falling into the shaft. From the way she was looking at him, he was fairly sure she had been there long enough to at least see him destroy the computer monitor.

Strangely, Umbra didn't even feel ashamed. He simply felt the urge to exclaim his frustration aloud to his Fireteam leader.

"Over 400,000 massive files on a single database, and the only 2 that I'm interested in are locked by some damn "__Top Secret__" lockup."

He found himself clenching his fists, and he took a moment to realize how childish his reaction was.

__So I didn't find what I expected. That doesn't excuse this type of behaviour.__

He cleared his throat, awkwardly, turning his optical gaze over to Jules. She hadn't moved an inch from her spot the entire time.

"Sorry." He began, shaking his head slowly. "I kinda lost my shit. I won't happen again."

She looked him up and down, as if assessing his apology, and then she simply nodded.

"Make sure it doesn't."

Tacks' voice boomed on the comms. Both Jules and Umbra started their descent in the elevator shaft while listening to him.

"Guys, we have a situation. There were 4 titanfalls just north of here, and I think they're Apex Predators."

__Damn.__

Umbra could only guess that they were there to collect him - and whatever trap they'd set, he had the stupidity to walk right into it.

__Not only myself, but my Fireteam.__

__I should have at least told them that the IMC hired Apex to look for me.__

Jules hit the bottom floor first, sprinting ahead of Umbra out through a wide, broken window and into the wrecked city. Through the comms, Umbra thought he could hear the active sound of Titan combat, but that was simply a guess, and he didn't bother to pause so he could check on Tacks or Pedro.

Jules' Ronin-class Titan met with them first, and she boarded it without hesitation, talking to the Fireteam over the radio as she did so. "What's the deal, guys? What are we up against?"

Pedro was the one to answer first this time. Tacks said nothing, which raised slight alarm in Umbra, although he tried his best ignore the fear.

"4 Apex mercs, Jules! Looks like Blisk with a bunch of rookie Pilots, 2 Northstars and 2 Legions!"

In Umbra's opinion, that was clearly an unfair match considering that they had prepped for recon, and that Tacks' Titan already seemed in bad shape.

He wanted to say something to the team, about why the Apex predators were there, hunting for them in particular. __I can do that later, or perhaps if they ask me. For now, we need to focus on dealing with our opponents.__

Umbra used his jumpkit to boost himself through a 2nd story window, and he sprinted at impressive speeds through the building. He jumped through a window on the other side of the building, right in front of Sierra. The Titan responded to his arrival quickly, reaching out with a huge arm and catching him mid-air, then pulling him into the cockpit in one swift movement. He had control of her a second later, and he guided her along a number of side roads until he rendezvoused with the Fireteam. He observed that both Pedro and Tacks' Titans looked particularly roughed up; but they were still functioning fine, and no one was reporting any personal injuries.

They'd decided to meet up at the end of end of one of the main streets going through District 12, and when they looked down it, they saw the Apex squad rumbling towards them in diamond formation, slowly splitting apart to box the Militia team in and trap them. Pedro fired a burst of gas canisters onto the road, and he raised his Thermite Launcher to ignite the spray once it had spread far enough. Tacks moved behind the cover of a wide pillar to begin sharpshooting with his Tracker Cannon, and Jules stood alongside Umbra in a more simple, direct confrontation with the enemy Titans.

Tacks grunted over the comms, as if to silently acknowledge the situation to his team. Pedro grunted back, dramatically, and Umbra couldn't tell if it should have lightened the mood or only made it worse.

Without warning, as the Apex mercenaries continued to close the gap, 1st Sergeant Pall from Lieutenant Bordon's Fireteam announced himself on the Platoon channel.

"This is Pall. The last raid group just left the District. Let's head home Platoon. Activate extract beacons and wait for your rides."

If he wasn't so busy focusing on the approaching enemy Titans, Umbra would have more closely wondered why Lieutenant Bordon himself didn't announce the end of the raid.

A notification on Sierra's HUD indicated that Jules had turned on her beacon, and that extraction was only a minute away.

__Alright. Just hold off the mercs for 60 seconds. How hard can that be?__

As it turned out, trying to stay alive proved quite difficult against the pack of Apex Predators. The mercenaries were very aggressive fighters, and they obviously knew the District well, since they somehow found pathways and advantages through the tight-knit architecture that Fireteam Bravo-Alpha didn't even consider.

One of the Apex Legion Titans activated it's Smart Core from down the road, pinning Jules and Tacks down with a volley of infinity ammunition. Without any clear reason, Umbra decided to rush the Titan while it was slowed by it's core, firing at it with his Chain Gun as he came closer. He jumped to one side to avoid the wide spray of bullets, and then he boosted forward, landing himself right in front of the Ion.

The Legion's Smart Core ended right then, and the two of them wrestled with each other violently for a few seconds, smashing each other into walls and landing minor blows. Umbra stunned the Legion's ocular systems by punching it straight in the optic, and then he grabbed onto it's hatch, pulling on it with great effort until it finally came free. He grabbed the Apex Pilot that was inside the legion and pulled them out, where he crushed them in Sierra's tight grasp.

With it's hatch gone, and it's Pilot dead, the damaged Legion was easy prey for Sierra, and she finished it with a single blow straight into it's cockpit, sending it toppling backwards into the concrete, disabled completely.

The other Legion was nowhere to be found, but both the Apex Ronin-class Titans attacked Umbra at once, forcing him to retreat back from where he came. He narrowly dodged a swing from a giant broadsword, but he had no time to recover and prepare for the other Titan which was swinging it's melee weapon at him, and Sierra ended up taking significant hull damage after some time.

Umbra was backed into a space between two buildings, and the next thing he knew, he was stuck there, constantly attempting to shove himself from building to building in a largely vain attempt to avoid the pair of Ronins slashing away at him.

Out of nowhere, Jules phase-shifted behind one of the Apex Titans in her own Ronin, and before either of the mercenaries could react, she shoved her giant broadsword straight through the chassis of one of the enemy mechs, killing the Pilot instantly, and likely disabling the Titan beyond repair as well.

The last remaining Apex Ronin stopped focusing on Sierra, and they turned to Jules to duel it out with her. Umbra used the opportunity of distraction, and he fired a string of salvo rockets into the Titan's leg, disabling their movement.

In sync together, both Jules and Umbra made a fist with one of their Titans' arms and pummeled the Ronin on either side with crushing power. The massive robot practically exploded into a mess of scrap flame under the force of both Militia Titans, and it crumpled to the ground with no signs of life.

Umbra was so focused on the combat, that he'd almost forgotten how to speak, and it took him a moment to gather the effort to talk into the comms once the adrenaline-pumping battle was over.

"Thanks." he muttered to Jules slowly. He didn't know why, but he was deeply hoping she would say something back to him.

Jules turned her Titan to face Sierra, and the Ronin-class mech made the vague movement of quick nodding through it's general body posture. "You had me and my team's back then. It was only fair I saved yours."

The extraction ships - two Widows and a Crow - pulled into the sky above them, descending at extreme speeds towards their position. Jules made a waving motion with her Titan, and the entire group of ships moved around in a circular motion, trying their best to reach Jules' location with efficient speed.

Tacks and Pedro stomped up in their Titans. Both looked a little damaged, but were still fully functional, and the Pilots inside the Titans reported straight to Jules through the Fireteam link as soon as they'd met up with her and Umbra.

"Tacks here. Pedro and me went after the other Legion. It looks like it decided to get smart and make a run for it while it still could."

"Damn coward." Pedro scowled into the radio, rather bluntly.

"But it doesn't make sense." Tacks mentioned thoughtfully, his voice even-toned. "If that was Blisk, why the hell did he run? I thought his motto was always "complete the contract or die trying," or something like that."

"I guess he wanted to live more than he wanted to succeed." Umbra blurted suddenly. He wasn't expecting himself to talk then, and he felt a little out of character to be getting involved in the conversation at all.

If it was unsettling to the team as well, they didn't mention it verbally.

The Widow ships pulled up alongside the Fireteam, and everyone disembarked their Titans. Making their way to the dropship that was waiting for them atop a nearby building.

As they boarded the ship, and the convoy started it's gradual ascension back into the high atmosphere, Umbra found that he could only think about one thing.

__My team is going to wonder why Apex Predators targeted us in particular, the most insignificant group of Pilots out of the entire raid.__

_How are they ___going to react when I tell them how much danger they're in, just being near me?__


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Seven:**

"Why didn't you say you were marked by Apex, Umbra?"

Jules was standing right in front of Umbra, her mechanical arms crossed over her artificial chest. She couldn't have worn the "sternly pissed" look any better, despite not having the ability to show expressions, and she tapped her heavy feet against the floor of the Cargo Bay impatiently as she waited for his answer.

"Uh…" he started, trying to choose his next words carefully. "Because I didn't actually __know __I was being hunted?"

Clearly, those weren't the right words, because Jules began pacing the open space in visual irritation, putting a hand on the side of her head as if she were forcing away a headache. Umbra tried again, trying to sound more helpful instead of plainly neutral.

"Well, okay, I knew they were __looking __for me. I didn't think they'd find me that fast, and I didn't really think it would __directly __put the team in danger either."

Pedro had already left to go the the Pilot Barracks, and Umbra couldn't blame him for wanting some downtime after the raid. The Bay was surprisingly empty despite having a load of stolen supplies dumped into it just then. Tacks was leaning against a wall withing earshot of the two simulacrums, and he watched them converse with obvious interest in what they were saying. He looked as if he wanted to say something, and Umbra nodded towards him, granting him the chance to speak. "What's on your mind, Tacks?"

"Oh, I dunno." Tacks mumbled, looking down at his boots and sighing lightly. "I just find it awfully weird that Apex Predators knew __exactly __where you would be today. It's been making me think up a list of potential spies among our allies."

It was an observation that Umbra had considered himself. He knew for a certainty that no one on his Fireteam would have told the IMC of his whereabouts. __But honestly, it could've been almost anyone on the MCS Rutledge. My appearance hasn't exactly been discreet.__

Jules looked Umbra up and down, holding that same frustrated posture that she'd put on at the beginning of their argument. Before she could say anything to Tacks or him, however, a Pulse Blade Pilot appeared onto the walkway above and across from them. The Pilot spotted them and stopped about halfway to the stairs, and he had to yell for them to hear him between the background noise and the fact that they were a good distance away.

"Bad news, people." Umbra recognized the voice as Corporal Pall, from Lieutenant Bordon's Fireteam. "Bordon died during the raid. Fried to a crisp inside his Titan."

Umbra nodded solemnly. He felt minorly sorrowful at the news, but for some reason he couldn't understand the deep, sudden mournfulness that was openly apparent between everyone else in the Cargo Bay.

__You just haven't been around long enough to get to know Bordon like they probably did.__

__He seemed like a good leader, and likely a good friend as well.__

His owns thoughts didn't comfort the odd feeling that he had in his stomach, telling him he should be more empathetic. To evade the idea, he continued to listen to Pall, who wasn't finished shortly debriefing them.

"I talked to Colonel Lasky, and it sounds like we won't have a replacement leader for a while yet, so we'll probably be sitting on our asses doing nothing for a while."

Corporal Pall left suddenly and silently, disappearing through the doorway into the Pilot Barracks. Without a word between the 3 of them, Jules, Tacks, and Umbra followed him, unloading and checking their weapons carefully as they went.

The Pilot Barracks were separated into blocks. Each block represented a Platoon, and each Fireteam was given either one or two sections in the block to live in, depending on whether or not there were both male and female Pilots on the team.

In Fireteam Bravo-Alpha's case, they only had one section, since Jules was the only female, and she was a simulacrum.

The entire team was quiet as anything as they all stepped into the apartment-sized room that was their so called home(A home that was rarely visited, for obvious reasons.). To Umbra's surprise, Pedro was still wide awake, fidgeting with some sort of app on a personal data pad as he sat on top of his bunk. Tacks stuck his Mastiff shotgun in is locker, and then he pulled a pen out from one of his pockets and threw it at Pedro, landing it squarely on the side of his friends' head.

"You coming to the chow line with me?" Tacks announced patiently, shuffling himself around to make his way back to the door right away. Pedro shrugged his shoulders and jumped down from his steel frame bunk, casually ambling along after Tacks, out of the room.

Silence engulfed the room, and for the first few seconds, it was plainly unsettling for Umbra. He looked over at Jules, who was cleaning her pistol with expert precision, using a cloth to rub down the inner tubing after she'd pulled the slider off.

It was Umbra's first time being inside the living quarters, and after a long while of standing there, feeling helpless, he stepped across the rectangular room over to the lockers, where he looked over the only 4 lockers that were there. Each locker had a metal plate over it that read the name and rank of each Fireteam member, but the locker on the far right was unnamed, since it no longer had any plate.

__That was Sam's locker before he died. Now mine I suppose.__

It felt out of place to be touching it, but Umbra reached for the locker handle and pulled the heavy door open, peering inside the shadowed space.

It was still full of Sam's belongings, some necessary, and some personal - apparently whoever had removed his name plate hadn't bothered to take out the items in the locker too.

His eyes caught the inside of the door, on which was plastered two fairly large photos. One was a photo of the Sam and the rest of Fireteam Bravo-Alpha, and the other was of just Jules and him, arm in arm; sister and brother, standing in the midst of a busy Titan Bay.

Umbra felt a spark of emotion rumble through his conscience, and he let a finger run along the photo. Hus mind somehow raveled back to Sam's words, in his last moments alive.

_"___You need to keep going without me. Don't be afraid to use my Titan. She may be quiet, but that just how she handles herself; Quiet and professional. Use my jumpkit. I've seen how you handle yourself, you'll make a fine Pilot.__

_"___Make sure the IMC doesn't take you. I don't know what kind of tech you're hiding behind that tin body, but it must reach the Militia. Do you understand?__

_"___And keep my… keep my sister safe. Keep Jules safe. Tell her I love her, and tell her I'm sorry for leaving…"__

He imagined the scene all over again, like remembering the passing of a good friend. Even then, the emotions involved behind it confused Umbra, and he had to force himself to look away from the smiling face portrayed in the photo.

"Was it painless for him?"

Jules' voice was low, and a little cracked with sorrow; as if she were experiencing a fresh wave of grief. Umbra turned, locking gazes with her, and he let the silence continue for quite a long time before responding.

"I don't know. He was unconscious when he died, so he couldn't tell me… But his death was peaceful. That I can guarantee."

Jules set her disassembled weapon down, and she moved from the table across the room to one of the bunks, where she sat down on the bottom bunk and laced her fingers together calmly. Once again, her body posture portrayed her expression all too well, and her sadness was quite obvious by the way that her entire self drooped lifelessly against the air around her.

Taking a bit of a risk, Umbra pulled a chair out from beside the table and set it alongside the bunk, sitting down on it carefully so he could give his full attention to her.

She focused her optic on him, as if expecting him to say something. When he failed to utter even a sound, she let her sight drop to the floor again, and she started to twiddle her thumbs. The sound of the small metal limbs scraping together as they did circles in the cup of her hand resonated throughout the room, and it was only her gentle, toned voice that broke it.

"I never found the motivation to… move his stuff out of your locker. I just… I just keep remembering him every time I try, and for a moment, it's like hearing that he died all over again…"

Her voice cut short, rattled with emotion and tethered by her grief. Umbra remained silent, leaning a bit more forward to show his keen interest in what she had to say.

"I- I'm sorry I seemed angry, at first. I just didn't know how to take the news right away, and seeing the person who had to deliver the message to me… it just didn't work well."

Like a child hiding from a scary concept, Jules pulled her metal feet up into her chest and wrapped her arms around them like a bundle, and she buried her head between it all, trying her best to inadvertently shut out the world around her.

Umbra sat there, staring, unsure of what to do.

__I can't really say anything useful in this situation.__

_… ___But maybe I should try something at least?__

He looked at the door to make sure no one was coming any time soon, and then he sat up, carefully, and switched to sitting on the bunk beside her.

Ever so precariously, he brought one arm, and then is other around her and hugged her briefly. It was a moment that caught even himself off guard, and he shrugged away from her before she could even do anything herself.

"This might sound weird," she said, "but… that actually helped a little. Not sure why."

She managed to cough out a laugh after saying that, and Umbra would have laughed back would the context behind it not been gravely concerning.

She waved a hand around and over her simulacrum head, as if embarrassed at everything that had just happened in those last couple of minutes. "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to see me like this. I try to suppress my grief until I'm alone or something…"

Umbra shrugged, uncertain of how to continue the conversation after what he'd done.

__Say something… honest.__

__That's what Sam would say, I imagine. And it's also what I'd prefer to do.__

"Don't think you have to hide anything from your team, Jules. We remain strong through unity, and that includes saying things like that to us." He paused briefly, tilting his head to one side comically as her demeanor slowly rose. "Thank you, Jules. For telling me that."

She nodded back at him slowly, although he suspected by then that she was lost in her own thoughts once more.

__Maybe I should leave her alone for a while; let her sift through her train of thought until she feels better.__

Umbra straightened himself, made a throat-clearing noise(Which wasn't necessary, but yet still natural to Umbra), and then stood up, taking a step across the quarters towards the lockers so he could clear Sam's belongings out.

He was stopped mid-step by an outstretched, metal hand that took hold of one of his forearms.

He looked over his shoulder, and gently brushed away Jules' grip on him before turning around to face her the second time around. "You good?"

She simply nodded again, but she didn't say anything until he'd sat back down in the chair beside the bunk.

"I don't want to be a hindrance." She muttered, soft enough that only they could communicate. "But… having some company for a while, __any __company, would be a nice change for once."

Umbra made himself more comfortable in the flat-seated chair - which was clearly too small or him - and he stayed there for a long while, in silence, with Jules.

He observed clearly at one point that it was the same kind of silence he found when visiting Sierra in the Titan Bay; it simply felt right for the time, despite how odd it would normally be.

__Maybe it's a robot thing. Who knows.__

And the two simulacrums stayed that way for longer than they realized.

The assembly line stretched on for what looked like forever, the shapes of each individual line dissipating into mere dots as it continued to grow beyond measure.

Every 5 meters or so along the line, a group of assembly bots and arms would mass-produce perhaps the most advanced technology that Vinson Dynamics, and ultimately the IMC, would ever come up with to that day.

Hundreds upon hundreds of Mark II Simulacrums. Very few were complete, but many were well on their way, with the vast budget of both the IMC and Vinson Dynamics being poured into the project endlessly.

Dr. Mallard stood alongside General Marder on one of the factory walkways, observing the gigantic production spectacle with great interest. The two men were certainly not on best terms with each other, as their posture next to each other indicated minor passive aggressiveness, perhaps even hostility.

An IMC Captain stepped out from the factory's control room, scaling the steep steps onto the walkway and stopping once he'd reached the general and the doctor.

"The Titan datacores are installed on the first dozen Mark II's, General. We need to complete the functionality tests, but they should be good to go after some calibration."

Marder turned to face the IMC Pilot, although Dr. Mallard continued to have his back to both of them, his arms leaning against the square railing as he looked down at the environment.

"Good." General Marder said to the Pilot, patting his on the shoulder approvingly. "Make sure these simulacrums have the right protocols installed. We don't want any more of our creations turning rogue on us, __especially __ones that have such powerful weapons at our disposal."

The General glared over at Dr. Mallard during the last half of his sentence. The doctor had finally turned around, and was eyeing both the IMC personnel with vague, covered disdain. "I wish we didn't have to kill him, General. That code is invaluable to me, and I do not have another complete copy of it. It was intended to stay only with Provus."

General Marder shrugged his shoulders, then returned to his spot alongside Dr. Mallard by the railing. The IMC Captain saluted, and walked away briskly.

"Provus is merely a casualty in the process of a bigger future." Marder eventually muttered, not prying his eyes from the scene of creation below and around them. "We both know he cannot live. We both know he is perhaps the only thing that could put an end to all this."

He stretched a hand out over the massive, unending production line of incomplete, yet scary amount of Mark II Simulacrums. He then placed a firm grip on Dr. Mallard's shoulder, and he held it there even when the doctor tried shrugging it off.

"I have invested a great deal in this project of yours, Dr. Mallard. And I will do whatever it takes to make sure that it helps me win the war against the damn rebels. __Whatever it takes.__"


End file.
